


f r a g m e n t s

by kkaengie



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Arranged Marriage, F/F, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Inaccurate hospital practices, Past Myoui Mina/Park Jisoo | Jihyo, Past Myoui Mina/Yoo Jeongyeon - Freeform, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28835259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkaengie/pseuds/kkaengie
Summary: “I can’t believe this.” Dahyun paces across the length of her room, practically wearing a path into her carpeted floors. The papers are still scattered over Dahyun’s bed, stolen from Sana’s bag. She only stills when she feels hands slip around her own, a breath trembling through her lips. “My mama, she wouldn’t-”"Dahyun." Chaeyoung's face is serious as she peers up at her, but her hands are shaking, tight around her own. "We deserve to know the truth. All three of us."ora near fatal accident unearths secrets that could destroy the lives they've built, or finally bring the answers they've been searching for
Relationships: Hirai Momo/Park Jisoo | Jihyo, Im Nayeon/Minatozaki Sana/Myoui Mina, Im Nayeon/Myoui Mina
Comments: 14
Kudos: 55





	1. time, curious time

It’s nothing short of a miracle, Jeongyeon thinks, as Mina’s laughter sounds over the steady beeping in the room. She can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of her lips, can’t help but make herself drunk on the simple sound, melting easily into the sight of her gummy smile, of her shining eyes.

“I was so young then,” Jeongyeon murmurs into the quiet that settles over the room, her hand tucked into Mina’s, her thumb brushing absently over the faint lines that criss-crossed over her pale skin. She matches the knowing smile on Mina’s face, feeling a swell of gratefulness for the time they’re allowed together, even now. “We both were.”

“Are you calling us old, Yoo Jeongyeon?” There is gentle playfulness in Mina’s tone, her voice tinged with the last of her laughter. Jeongyeon feels it then, the warmth that radiates from the woman sitting before her, the same warmth that has always soothed over the cracks of her mangled heart. Jeongyeon feels it then, the youth that blossoms from the woman sitting before her, slipping into the depth of Mina’s stare.

“Maybe,” Jeongyeon shoots back, mustering up a smile, trying not to let her eyes linger on the yellowing of Mina’s bruises. She cradles Mina’s hand a little closer, shifts in the hospital room she’s been perched in for hours, easing into the lull of Mina’s steady, teasing laughter. “Save your strength and let me _finish_ , for once.”

(“Dad?” Jeongyeon’s voice is quiet against her dad’s shoulder, voice almost lost in the bustle of the party ending around them. She’s tucked neatly into the circle of his arms, her eyelids drooping despite her best efforts, almost lulled to sleep by the steady rhythm of his footsteps. She lets out a soft noise of protest, determined fingers curling into the soft fabric of his suit. “ _Dad._ ”

“ _Yes,_ Jeongyeon?” Her dad indulges her with a light laugh and fond resignation, more than accustomed to Jeongyeon’s impatience. Her persistence. Jeongyeon lets out a pleased noise at finally being acknowledged, but her dad is quick to notice her hesitation, his hand broad against Jeongyeon’s back. She wonders, for a moment, if she’d get into trouble - if resolving her curiosities was worth the price of getting answers. “Have you changed your mind, my pretty girl?”

“No,” Jeongyeon murmurs in reply, shaking her head and pulling back to meet his gaze. Her dad exaggerates a low groan, and Jeongyeon huffs out a laugh, her tiny fist bouncing against his shoulder in protest. “Dad!”

“Okay, okay, you’re not that heavy.” Her dad grins, tucking her dark hair behind her ear and shifting her in his arms. They amble through another crowd of flashing lights, but Jeongyeon hardly notices them, shielded by the wall of towering guards shuffling along beside them. Her dad taps a finger against her nose, drawing her attention back towards him. “What did you want to ask me, Jeongyeon?”

“Well,” Jeongyeon starts, glancing towards her older sisters for a moment as she musters up her courage. Seungyeon sticks her tongue out at her, but Soojin offers a warm smile, easing the well of worry building in Jeongyeon’s tummy. Jeongyeon turns back to her dad at that, to this kind smile and warm eyes. “What’s an intended?”

Her dad laughs again - the kind of laugh that was Jeongyeon’s favourite. The one that came all the way up from his belly, rumbling through his chest, and only making his kind eyes shine even brighter. He soothes a hand over Jeongyeon’s hair, and laughs a little longer, sharing a fond look with her mom over Jeongyeon’s shoulder.

Jeongyeon pouts, especially as he tucks her back against his shoulder, Jeongyeon’s noise of protest lost in the low rumble of the song he begins humming, lulling her back into the sleepy state she’d found herself in only moments ago. Jeongyeon yawns despite herself, practically forgetting what she’d been asking about only seconds earlier.

“All in good time, my pretty girl,” She hears, a mere breath against the crown of her head. Jeongyeon can hardly feel the brush of his kiss, his hand cradling the back of her head as she sinks deeper into the clutches of sleep and the circle of his arms. “All in good time.”)

There is a quiet that settles after she’s spoken, and for a moment, Jeongyeon wonders if the limited time she has with Mina has already come to an end. Instead, she finds herself under the weight of Mina’s gaze, a soft smile tugging at the corners of her lips, urging her on.

“For a while, I didn’t know what Seungyeon had meant - why she had been so adamant in keeping me out of the loop,” Jeongyeon hums, over the rustle of the sterile sheets and Mina’s breath. The hand tucked into her own shifts, and for a moment, Jeongyeon lets herself believe that Mina is still hers. “I wish I had listened to her.”

(“I bet you can’t catch me!”

Seungyeon can only laugh at Jeongyeon’s boastful declaration, especially when Jeongyeon finds herself tripping over her own feet moments later. Their dogs swarm around her, yapping excitedly and kicking sand right over her. Seungyeon shoos them away gently, eyes swimming with amusement as she stands before her. Jeongyeon huffs as Seungyeon hauls her back up, squirming away from the hands brushing sand away from her ruddy cheeks, pouting and golden from soaking up the summer sun.

“Caught you,” Seungyeon is happy to tease, hitching a grumpy Jeongyeon into her arms as their mom calls them back for lunch.

Jeongyeon only gives another huff, almost too big for Seungyeon to carry now. Seungyeon walks a little slower, relishing in the few moments of quiet they could have, away from the public and their piercing gaze. “You tripped me.”

“How could I have tripped you?” Seungyeon asks, pinching Jeongyeon’s nose and grinning at the outraged cry she lets out. Jeongyeon squirms for a moment, but settles quickly against her sister, tired from their day out in the sun. Seungyeon only slows further, running a hand over Jeongyeon’s sea-tangled hair. “Jeongyeon?”

“Yeah?” Jeongyeon hums, cheek pressed against the red of Seungyeon’s shoulder, hair already curling from the water. 

“Don’t grow up too fast, okay?” Seungyeon starts walking again, then, at the sound of their mother’s second call, hitching Jeongyeon higher into her arms. There is a kiss to her head, too soft and too quick for Jeongyeon to wriggle away from. “You have to promise me.”

“I can grow up as fast as I want!” Jeongyeon exclaims, the smile on her face melting away as Seungyeon fails to mirror it. Jeongyeon only nods then, face awash with confusion as Seungyeon hooks their pinkies, pressing their thumbs together. “Okay,” She mumbles. “I promise.”

“Good.” Seungyeon lets her down then, urging Jeongyeon along with a light pat to her butt. “Go. Mom packed Dad’s special kimbap for you today.”

Jeongyeon lets out an excited whoop, earning a smothering of kisses from their mother when she almost slips again, talks of promises and growing up already forgotten. Seungyeon can only smile, and settle, and watch, and hope that of all their promises, Jeongyeon keeps this one.)

“You forgot,” Mina deadpans, earning a small whine as her hand slips away from Jeongyeon’s grasp for the first time that evening, pinching Jeongyeon’s warming cheeks. 

“I was young!” Jeongyeon defends sheepishly, leaning into the warmth of Mina’s touch as she relinquishes her hold, soothing her thumb over her skin, instead. She peers up at Mina’s face, like she has a million times before - at her sleepy smile and exasperated stare. “I wanted to know more about it. About you.”

(“Who’s that?”

Her mother’s head lifts at her words, a surprised smile crossing her face. Jeongyeon doesn’t protest when she’s brought up onto her lap, just high enough to see the pictures on the dining table before them. The pages set neatly beside the pictures are written in a language Jeongyeon hasn’t learned yet, signed with characters she doesn’t recognise. Jeongyeon doesn’t let it hold her attention longer than it has to, her eyes fixated on the photographs before her, of the same little girl, dark haired and ruddy cheeked and never smiling.

“That’s Mina,” Her mother tells her, a smile in the quiet of her voice as she soothes a hand through Jeongyeon’s hair, tousled from her riding class. It feels like a secret, almost, only piquing her attention even further. “She’s your intended.”

“My intended?” Jeongyeon echoes with a wrinkle of her nose, tilting her head at the pictures spread out on the table. They seem new, captioned neatly in permanent marker, all of the same little girl, probably the same age as her. She’s pretty, Jeongyeon supposes, but not prettier than any of the other girls at school. “What’s an intended?”

Her mother only laughs, the same laugh that her dad had laughed all those nights ago, pressing a lingering kiss to the top of her head. “I’ve already told you too much,” Her mother grins, dancing her fingers along Jeongyeon’s sides to make her squirm. “Run along. Your sisters are having lunch in the garden.”

“Can I take one?” Jeongyeon asks as she wriggles out of her mother’s lap, her fingers already closed around the corner of one of the many pictures displayed before her.

“Seems you already have,” Her mother sighs fondly, tipping down to press another kiss to her head. Jeongyeon only matches her grin with a cheeky smile of her own, running towards the garden doors and squeaking at the scolding in her mother’s tone, trailing like the dirt she’s tracking along behind her.

It’s only later than night, when she’s scrubbed clean and tucked in, that she takes the picture out again, tugged free from the pile of clothes she’d left by the foot of her bed. She traces her thumb over the letters of Mina’s name, taking in the sight of this Mina, blowing bubbles in the bright sunshine.

“What’s so special about you?” Jeongyeon mumbles into the quiet of her own room, curling into her covers and bathing in the warmth of her night light. The girl in the picture doesn’t answer, but Jeongyeon supposes she doesn’t have to. “Goodnight, Mina.”

As she tucks the picture into the pages of her favourite bedtime story, Jeongyeon can only sigh, and smile. They would meet soon enough. She just knew it.)

Jeongyeon finds herself drawn back to reality then, feeling Mina’s hand still as her fingers brush against the band on Jeongyeon’s finger. She looks, regardless, at the woman that she has lost so many times. At the woman she can’t help but love, even after all this time. 

Mina clears her throat. Jeongyeon looks away, drawing her hand back and busying herself with a glass of water to give to Mina. She takes the moment to suck in a steadying breath, to soothe the swell of hurt that rises in her chest, holding the glass to Mina’s lips. Mina drinks, leaving Jeongyeon to gather her thoughts, her words.

“No one wanted to tell me about you,” Jeongyeon says, in lieu of the apology that’s always at the tip of her tongue. The glass thuds low against the table as she sets it back down, Mina letting out a low hum and offering her a thankful smile. Her hand slips back into Jeongyeon’s. Jeongyeon’s mind slips back into chaos.

“Except for Seungyeon,” Mina finishes with a knowing glint in her eye, her smile softening as she settles back against the pillows. “She was always Dahyun’s favourite. Never afraid to answer her questions.”

Jeongyeon can’t help but laugh at that, shaking her head at the memories that flood her mind, of the endless questions that sprouted from the simple answers her sister had given their daughter. She tuts. “She was never afraid to answer _mine_ , either.”

(“What’s an intended?” Jeongyeon asks Seungyeon over breakfast one Sunday morning, when Seungyeon’s not being rushed off to classes and lessons by her tutors (unlike Soojin, her seat empty at the table). Jeongyeon likes it when Seungyeon finally has the time to sit down and listen. That doesn’t, of course, mean she _will_ listen. “Seungyeon!”

“What is it, Jeongyeon?” Seungyeon grumbles, rubbing at her eyes and peering at her from across a table too big for just five people. Her chopsticks are poised, ready to pick off one of the dishes on her side of the table. _Again_.

“What’s an intended?” Jeongyeon repeats, shifting on the cushion she was seated on to see her older sister better. Seungyeon lets out a small sigh, seeming to regard her for a moment before lowering her chopsticks. Jeongyeon straightens in her seat under her sister’s gaze, the solemn seriousness that shone within them.

It’s the same look at the beach, the same one that had pierced right through her. Seungyeon’s promise echoes faintly in her mind.

“An intended,” Seungyeon starts, plainly and simply, as sure as she’s always been in Jeongyeon’s eyes. Her sister is quiet for a moment, a moment that seems to stretch into an eternity. Jeongyeon squirms. Seungyeon sighs. “An intended, Jeongyeon, is someone that has been chosen for you to marry in the future.”

“Marry?” Jeongyeon echoes in confusion, setting her own chopsticks down and wiggling a little closer to the table. Seungyeon seems to straighten in her seat as Jeongyeon comes closer, as if drawing her words back, but unable to - not anymore. “To someone I don’t know?”

“You do know her,” Seungyeon reassures, but it does very little to actually do so. Jeongyeon wrinkles her nose, and Seungyeon laughs, reaching over to tap it. “Her name is Mina. Her parents are the ones that send pictures and letters all the time.”

The picture she’s weathered with her own gaze flashes in her mind, and Jeongyeon rubs at her nose, slumping back into her seat. “But why would Mama and Papa do that?”

“Because of an old promise our grandpa and Mina’s grandpa made a long, long time ago.” Seungyeon scoffs at her own words and shakes her head, reaching over to ruffle Jeongyeon’s hair and offering a smile that settles the turmoil in Jeongyeon’s stomach. “Don’t worry about it too much, okay? It’s still a long while away.”

Seungyeon returns to her meal, returns to stealing Jeongyeon’s dishes, but Jeongyeon barely notices, too busy thinking about Mina and the old family promises her parents intended for her to keep.

Later, as she retires into a quiet corner of her room, Jeongyeon pulls the picture out again, from the heavy book of fairytales her mother had read to her a million times, now. 

The corners are bent and worried now, the writing smudged and worn away with the many times Jeongyeon has traced over the characters with her fingers. The photograph had become a place of comfort, almost, with all the stories she’s told Mina, with all the stories that she’s been told _of_ Mina. Despite everything, a part of her already _does_ know Mina. She knows the shape of her smile, and the things she liked to do, and how excited she was to meet her, too. 

Jeongyeon lets out a small breath, one that seemed heavier than the entire universe, and hesitates to place the picture back into the pages of the stories she loved.

Later, as her mother shuts her storybook and kisses her goodnight, Jeongyeon wonders if it will be the same for them. The same as the princes, the princesses, the lives they lived and their happily ever afters.

Later, as the glow of the moonlight spills into her room, Jeongyeon only smiles, tucking the photograph under the safety of her pillow, instead. “Goodnight Mina.”

 _I can’t wait to meet you._ )

“I was really excited,” Jeongyeon admits, trailing her fingers across the rough material of Mina’s bandages, careful not to let her gaze linger over the crimson spots that stained it still. She wonders how much longer they have left to pretend, bathed in the yellow light of the bedside table, left to pretend that everything was still as it was. The clock ticks. Jeongyeon offers Mina a bashful grin. “And then we met in the hospital.”

Mina’s laughter is lighter now, coated with exhaustion, as if a single breath could carry her whole life away. Jeongyeon fusses over her stitches, and tries not to think about it. “I couldn’t understand a thing you said.”

“I couldn’t understand you either.” Jeongyeon wonders if Mina could hear it, the worry that tainted her own laughter. Mina only offers a kind smile and a faint squeeze, Jeongyeon catching the glint of her own ring when she shifts their hands against the sheets. She swallows thickly, forcing herself to meet Mina’s patient gaze. “I think it was better that way. I knew I liked you from the moment I saw you.”

(There had been many things in Jeongyeon’s life that had already been decided for her.

Her lessons and her schools and her extracurricular activity. The food she ate and the clothes she wore and the people she mingled with. Even her own future, even the person she would end up marrying. Everything had already been set into place, one box after another, simply waiting to be ticked off.

Everything except meeting Mina.

Jeongyeon always finds it funny that, with all of their meticulous planning and all of their tireless preparations, Jeongyeon meets Mina in the quiet of the hospital’s play area, Jeongyeon narrowly escaping Seungyeon’s busy hospital room.

“Hey,” Jeongyeon greets, glad her voice doesn’t let up in the nerves climbing into her throat. She climbs into the toy house in the middle of the play area, staring down at the girl she’s only seen in countless photographs. “I know you.”

Mina startles at her words, dressed in a matching set of pyjamas entirely too thick for the warmth of the hospital. Jeongyeon can’t help but watch her, the way Mina’s eyes seem to light up in recognition, responding in a language Jeongyeon doesn’t fully understand.

Jeongyeon grows unsure, overwhelmed, sticking her hands in the pockets of her shorts before she musters up the nerves to speak again. “Can I sit beside you?”

Mina looks around before she answers, Jeongyeon taking in the way the tension melts away from her shoulders when she finds no one else outside the house. She speaks again, but Jeongyeon doesn’t move until Mina pats the space beside her.

“Thanks,” She says as she sinks down beside Mina, careful not to knock over the tower Mina was building. “I’m Jeongyeon.”

Mina seems as puzzled as her for a moment, before nodding in understanding. “Mina,” She hears. “Myoui Mina.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jeongyeon offers, along with her hand, which Mina takes with a hesitant smile. She pulls it back to scratch at the back of her neck, shoulder to shoulder with Mina in this tiny plastic home. She gestures around their small space. “Why are you here?”

Mina’s eyebrows only furrow, and Jeongyeon thinks she looks cute. - kind of. She looks a little different from her pictures. Paler, without the same roundness in her cheeks. Jeongyeon tries again, pointing at the bright pink band around Mina’s wrist.

Understanding flickers in Mina’s eyes. She turns back to the windows, peeking briefly though the pastel yellow shutters before directing her attention back to Jeongyeon.

Jeongyeon can only sit and watch as Mina lifts a single finger to her lips, shushing her, before pulling the neckline of her pyjamas down, just a little. She can’t help the gasp that escapes her, the beginnings of a pale pink scar greeting her, stark against the light of Mina’s skin.

Mina tugs her pyjamas back up at that, a small shiver rippling through her, and Jeongyeon wonders how much more it could hurt - to break your heart.

“That’s scary,” Jeongyeon murmurs, exaggerating a horrified face, and Mina can only laugh, cupping her hands over her mouth to muffle her giggles. Jeongyeon brightens, happy to have connected with the other girl, even just a little.

In the comfort of their tiny plastic home, they find themselves teaching each other simple things. _Hello. Goodbye._ How are yous and how to ask for someone’s name. Simple things like their ages, their favourite colours, how to call someone ‘ _friend’_. After a while, Mina starts to quiet, head drooping and resting against her own.

Jeongyeon doesn’t mind.

She lets her eyes linger on their linked pinkies and their teetering tower of blocks, and considers that maybe being Mina’s intended wouldn’t be so bad after all. Not when they could make castles out of Lego’s and homes of tiny spaces.

They sit together in the warmth of their tiny plastic home, and fall asleep against each other, Mina’s head tucking in neatly against her shoulder. Jeongyeon wakes after what seems like hours, mouth dry and entirely too warm, but unwilling to move an inch away from the other girl.

Jeongyeon hears it then - the calls from her dad, the way his voice was ringing out through the hallways. The panic that tinges his tone. She rubs her eyes, hears another voice. Younger, higher, calling out for Mina.

Mina doesn’t say much else as she rubs at her own eyes, giving her a tired but pleased smile. Jeongyeon jolts at the sudden kiss Mina places on her cheek, gone as quickly as Jeongyeon had found her. Jeongyeon takes a moment to watch through the shutters, eyeing the two girls who come to Mina’s side, seeming to scold her as they start to pull her away.

Only then does Jeongyeon step out, and right into her dad’s line of sight as he rounds the corner. She hears the heave of his breath, of this relief, feels the tremble in his strong hands as he sweeps her out of the tiny space and into his arms.

“Bye,” She calls out, faint and hesitant, witnessing the chaos Mina is suddenly trapped in. Still, Mina hears her, offering a small smile and a wave before she’s tugged towards the other direction, away from her.

It’s only later in the car, as Jeongyeon drowns out the sound of her mother’s concerned lecture, that she gets a moment to think again. Think about what had happened in the hospital. About Mina. Jeongyeon sinks into the leather seats and wonders, wonders how long Mina has had to live like that. Wonder how long her own parents have known, wonders how she could even be the age, smiling girl in the photos after that.

Jeongyeon thinks and thinks and thinks, brushing her fingers against the cheek Mina had kissed.

How long had Mina known, too, that her life had been promised away, just like that?

Jeongyeon falls asleep again, to the rumble of the engine and the lull of her mother’s voice. She dreams of castles and kingdoms and Mina, ruling by her side. She manages a small smile.

Maybe marrying Mina really wouldn’t be so bad, after all.)

“I kissed you.” Mina’s exhaustion is plain in her voice, then, even with the smile she manages to give Jeongyeon, sinking into her pillows beneath her.

Jeongyeon brings Mina’s hands up to her lips, unable to help the way her throat tightens, the way her chest aches, the way her eyes shimmer. She gives her a watery laugh, tightening her hold as Mina’s begins to slip out of hers. “You kissed me.”

“Thank you for spending time with me again today,” Mina murmurs, clearly on the brink of sleep, with Jeongyeon left to watch the faint rise and fall of her chest, just like she has for weeks, and weeks. “It’s great to spend some time together after everything. Just you and me.”

“Of course,” Jeongyeon whispers thickly as the first of her tears fall, Mina’s eyes fluttering to a complete close. In the shuddering silence of the room and Mina’s breaths, Jeongyeon closes her eyes and pleads with whatever high powers put Mina in this position in the first place. “You have to wake up again, okay? Please… wake up.”


	2. i gamble with the days and nights, and our separation

“You should go home, you know. Get some rest.”

Jeongyeon lifts her head at the sound of Sana’s voice, roused from her light nap on the side of Mina’s bed. The soft, slow beeping continues to fill the room. They’ve been here long enough to learn how to ignore it.

“Dahyun?” She can’t help but ask, craning her neck to see if her daughter was waiting by the door. Sana shakes her head. Jeongyeon swallows down the guilt that rises like bile in her throat.

Sana is soundless as she crosses the room, setting her bag down beside the coat Jeongyeon had draped over the couch, her steps steady and practiced. Sana adjusts the sheets resting over Mina’s body. Jeongyeon finally withdraws her hand from Mina’s sleepy grasp. 

“She took her personal car home from shooting today,” Sana informs her, voice low, careful not to wake Mina even in the little time she had to spend with her. 

Jeongyeon lets a weighty resignation settle over her shoulders. Jeongyeon knows her daughter, knows that she wouldn’t be found in the lonely dark of their home, not if she could help it. Sana only shakes her head, mustering a smile and looking as young as she did then, so many years ago.

“How was she?” Sana asks, drawing her eyes away from Jeongyeon gaze upon Mina, her gaze as tender as her touch always is. Jeongyeon supposes she understands. Sana had been the one person to have loved Mina longer than any of them.

“I got her to stay awake for a few hours.” Jeongyeon is happy to mirror the grateful smile sends her way, watching as Sana settles on the other side of the bed, reaching up to tuck Mina’s dark hair behind her ears. Jeongyeon is happy not to mention the way her touch lingers.

“A lot better than not at all,” Sana jokes, albeit weakly, taking Mina’s other hand into hers. She’s endlessly gentle, cradling Mina’s casted hand on her lap, eyes running over the silly drawings and notes the girls had written all over her cast. “I’m glad she doesn’t have to wear the mask anymore.”

Jeongyeon is haunted still, by the image of Mina, small and lost in a tangle of wires, rasping through each breath. She shakes her head, taking Minas’s hand back into her own to press a kiss to Mina’s knuckles. The weight of Sana’s stare only doubles the weight of her own selfishness. “Tell me something.”

“What do you want me to tell you, Jeongyeon?” Sana humors her, like she always does, a smile blooming into the seriousness of her stare. The words on the tip of her tongue don’t spill out, and Jeongyeon is grateful - for now.

Jeongyeon already knows how many times Sana has held her tongue for less.

“Tell me anything.” Jeongyeon decides to push her luck, relinquishing her hold on Mina’s hand to fold her arms on the side of Mina’s bed, chin resting upon them. Anything, Jeongyeon says, as if Sana hasn’t told her everything before, over steaming mugs and under lashing rain.

“Like what, Myoui-Yoo Jeongyeon?” Sana’s laughter is teasing, taunting, hair spilling over her shoulders as she tilts her head in question.

“Come on.” Jeongyeon rolls her eyes, letting Sana’s light laughter draw a smile onto her face, casting a quick glance to Mina’s still sleeping face. The sound of her full name sends a shiver down her smile; a reminder of all that she had. A reminder of all that she’s lost. “Something silly. Something you haven’t thought about in a while.”

Sana’s smile grows fond, then, eyes softening, flickering back to Mina’s sleeping figure. “The first time I met Mina, I snuck her out of her house and went down to the beach.”

(“Why do I have to be here?”

Sana can’t help but ask her mother, more out of curiosity than petulance, wondering what was so important that she had to be dressed up so nicely. Her mother only soothes a hand over her hair, a kind smile on her face, eyes soft and understanding. The car, if Sana could still call it that with how big it was, rumbles along quietly, so quietly Sana might fall asleep.

“We’re here for my new job, remember?” Her mother explains gently as she shifts her medical bag higher onto her lap. “Doctor Myoui asked me to bring you along when he find out you were his daughter, Mina’s, age.”

Sana only nods, literally faced with the situation as the car approaches a house three, four times bigger than their own. She’d heard of the Myouis, of course. She had seen Doctor Myoui on the nights she and her Papa would pick her mother up from the hospital. She had seen their son on the television, always at the forefront of the games her Papa liked to watch.

Sana had heard of Mina the most, from her mother and her work, of how lovely Mina always looked. Of how unfortunate her situation had been. Sana had never asked, and her mother had never explained further, only ever pressing a lingering kiss to her head, wrapping Sana up in her tight embrace. 

The Myouis had always been kind, but almost otherworldly, as if they existed on a plane entirely separate from their own. Sana can only wonder where she fit in in all of this, especially when she’d much rather be out trekking with Momo and her dad.

The adults don’t pay much attention to Sana, nothing more than greeting her warmly and urging her towards their expansive garden to enjoy the sunshine. Sana can only watch as her mother is ushered down a long hallway by Doctor Myoui and his wife, their faces suddenly serious. Sana watches until she can’t see them anymore, left to stand by the tall sliding doors leading to the outside. 

Sana heaves out a small, nervous breath, but steps outside anyway, multicolored stones crunching under her feet. The warm sun beats down against her skin as she walks, only reminding her of Momo and the ice cream they would have had once they reached the small store at the top. She hopes Momo isn’t too upset with her once she gets back. Maybe she can get her something to make it up to her.

It was strange, really, seeing the ocean and the beaches beyond the gardens, beyond the tall fences - bright and blue and beautiful. Sana wishes it weren’t so close, her hands closing around the rungs of the towering fence before her, tasting the salt on her tongue with her next breath.

“Who are you?” She hears from behind her, and Sana screams, whipping around in surprise. There’s a girl standing behind her, looking equally as frightened, hands clutching at her chest. Sana’s shoulders sink down in relief at the sight of her, recognition clicking in her mind. Mina. This must be Mina, if her mother’s descriptions were anything to go by. Dark hair and dark eyes and light skin, shadowed by the hat that drooped over her head. “Are you lost?”

“No.” Sana shakes her head immediately, sinking back against the fence behind her to calm her thundering heart. She regards Mina for a moment, just as Mina regards her, looking equally as lost as she was. “My Mama brought me here to meet you.”

“Meet me?” Mina echoes in confusion, head tilting, and Sana thinks she looks kind of cute, then. Mina reminds her of Momo’s puppy back home, looking at her with the same wide eyes. Sana decides that she likes her, just like that. Mina seems to draw into herself, then, eyes growing curious. “You aren’t Jeongyeon, are you?”

“No,” Sana repeats, wondering just who this Jeongyeon might be, if Mina was expecting someone other than her. She tucks her hair behind her ear, not feeling so silly about her pretty new dress when she finally takes Mina in fully. She’s pretty, too, in her flowy pink sundress, hair curling over her shoulders. “I’m Sana. Minatozaki Sana.”

“Oh,” Mina murmurs, and Sana thinks she sounds disappointed, Sana’s own shoulders drooping at the sound of Mina’s voice. “That’s too bad. You’re so pretty.”

“Thank you.” Sana feels her cheeks warm at Mina’s easy words, Mina sidling up beside her as they turn back towards the ocean. Their shoulders brush. Sana steals another look. She knows she’s not much older than Mina, and it feels nice, making another friend in a strange situation like this. “I think you’re pretty too.”

“Thank you,” Mina echoes with a smile, one Sana mirrors easily. The breeze rolling over the sea coms to wash over them as they stand there, quiet and still. “I always wanted to go down there.”

“You’ve never been down there?” Sana asks in shock, wondering how someone who lived so close to the water had never even wandered down to visit it. Sana supposes she voices her words out without meaning to at the way Mina hums, small hands wrapping around the rungs of the fence, too. As tall as a skyscraper, with the way it towered over them both. “Why not?”

“Papa says it’s too dangerous for me,” Mina tells her, a hand straying to her chest for the briefest of moments. Sana supposes she can’t argue with that, her own Papa’s words ringing in her ears. It was dangerous to get close to the water without an adult nearby, even if Sana did know how to swim - just a little.

Mina doesn’t offer any more words, turning back towards the sand, the water; so close and yet still out of reach. Sana watches for another moment before she catches sight of the gate further down the path, her eyes brightening as the idea pops into her mind. Surely it would be okay, right? They wouldn’t even go down to the water. “Let’s go.”

“Go?” Mina’s nose wrinkles at her statement, jumping a little when Sana offers her hand. Mina looks almost as if she wanted to run, eyes swimming with doubt. Sana is patient, smiling brightly when Mina’s hand slips into her own. “Where are we going?”

“Just onto the sand.” Sana brings a single finger up to her lips, throwing an exaggerated glance around as she begins to lead the way down the path. She earns a laugh, even as Sana feels the hesitance in Mina’s steps. “Come on. It’ll be fun!”

“We’ll get in trouble,” Mina points out, but doesn’t try to stop her. She even matches the eager bounce in Sana’s step as they near the gate, soon reaching the only thing standing between them and freedom.

“I’ll take care of you,” Sana promises, not chancing another glance over their shoulders as she wriggles the gate open. The metal is heavy, but quiet as it creaks open, the sound lost in the gentle crash of the waves. Sana doesn’t hesitate, stepping out of her sandals and sinking her feet into the warm sand, feeling its warmth creeping easily into her skin. She turns her head back to Mina, to the look of hesitation in her eyes, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “I promise.”

Mina follows her only then, stepping out of her own sandals and not the sand, slow and careful. A small gasp leaves her lips as she begins to sink, Sana keeping a firm hold as Mina tries to retreat, worry painted across her face. “It feels weird!”

“But nice too, right?” Sana can’t help but giggle at the scrunch of Mina’s face when she finally looks up at her, watching as Mina’s cheeks begin to fill with colour. She’s careful not to trip over her own feet as she continues to pull Mina along, drinking in the wonder that grows on her face, feeling a strange warmth blossom in her chest. 

Weird, but nice.

Mina doesn’t answer her, not with words. She only squeezes her hand, offering a smile that seemed brighter than the sun, eyes bright and sparkling. They sit together on the sand, soaking up the sun and the sound of the ocean, lining up the pretty seashells they’d collected on the way down.

That day, Sana learns of a great many things. She learns of Mina, and her old home, right across the sea they were sitting right in front of. Of Mina, and her love of dancing, even if it stole every last one of her breaths. Of Mina, and the life she was living, already promised away.

That day, Sana learns of little freedoms, her hand tucked tightly into Minas, and the lengths she would go, just to give Mina another taste of it.)

“I got into so much trouble with my mom,” Sana breathes out the laughter bubbling in her chest, shaking her head. They had been so young and clueless then. Things had been so much simpler, then. Jeongyeon only watches the way Sana’s shoulders draw into themselves, her hair curtaining her face for a beat. Another. 

“Was it worth it?” Jeongyeon asks a question that she already knows the answer to. Asks a question she’d asked herself a million times. 

“Of course.” Sana’s voice trembles along to the next breath Mina draws in, but her answer is firm - resolute. Sana’s shoulders only tighten further, like a rubber band that could snap at any moment. Jeongyeon wonders if it ever would. “I remembered her smile for the longest time. The way she looked at me. Like I’d shown her all of the secrets of the world.”

Jeongyeon knows, then, that Sana has always loved Mina, too. Loved her for longer than she ever has. Loved her, endlessly, selflessly, even now. She straightens when Sana calls her name, restless fingers twisting the ring around her finger. Tell me something, she hears, over the next thunderous beeps of the machine beside the bed. Anything.

“I think it was the hardest at the beginning,” Jeongyeon starts, eyes trained on the way Sana’s shoulders trembled. “Realizing all that came with being Mina’s intended.”

(“Don’t be shy, Jeongyeon.” Her father’s voice is soft, soothing. He tucks her dark hair behind her ear when she hides away behind him, wary of the new people standing before her. It feels different now, meeting Mina out in the open. 

Jeongyeon remembers it for the longest time, the gentle, coaxing plea in his voice.

It had been the first time, really, that her father had ever asked her for something - anything. He presses a firm hand to her back, urging her forward to remedy the girl who didn’t look nearly as wary as she did. “We’ve wanted you to meet Mina for a very long time.”

On what seems like the hottest day of the Summer, Yoo Jeongyeon meets Myoui Mina for the second time, 6 years old and regarding her with a soft, hopeful smile.

Of course, they’ve already met, but this was different from the safety of the tiny plastic home they’d hidden away in.

She knows of the Myouis now. Knows of their connections to her family, through decades and generations. Knows they’re practically royalty, knows that Mina had been born the same as her, with a silver spoon in her mouth. Jeongyeon has heard of her, from the mouths of her mother and her sisters, cooing over photographs sent in heavy letters. From the mouth of her father, over dinners and galas, of the first girl born into the Myouis for generations.

Jeongyeon knows so much of Mina and yet it means little to her.

Nothing could have prepared her for the first time she truly sees her, standing in the warm sunshine before her.

Mina is still as quiet as she is beautiful, but Mina smiles and Jeongyeon mirrors it, unable to help herself. They’re seated at a table away from their parents, away from even Seungyeon and Soojin, shadowed by their nannies as they bask in the brilliant Summer sunshine.

“Hello again,” Mina greets her, startling Jeongyeon with the sound of her mother tongue falling from Mina’s lips. Jeongyeon’s eyes brighten. Mina’s smile does, too.

“Hello again,” Jeongyeon echoes, basking in the brilliant warmth that sparks within her chest. It sticks with her for the longest time, the way Mina’s eyes had twinkled, sparkling with the mischief of the secret only they knew.

They sit together, cross-legged at a table far too big for either of them, heads ducked close together. They speak quietly to each other, happy to be lost in their own little universe. Lost in the mess of languages, and smiles, and laughter. They’re lost in numbers, in naming silly body parts and pulling funny faces when they think the other isn’t looking, their hands finding the other in the midst of their giggles. 

Mina seems to laugh at everything she says, but Jeongyeon doesn’t mind too much, not when she does the same, her stomach nearly hurting at the joy that bubbles up from it. Mina laughs, and smiles, and looks almost entirely different from their time in the hospital, eyes bright and cheeks flushed. Jeongyeon drinks it all in, wishing never to see Mina like that ever again.

Jeongyeon leaves that evening, propped against her father’s hips, waving with a shy but shining smile. Mina watches her go, propped against her father’s own, just like she does for the next few days, weeks, months.

They spend nearly every waking moment together, growing easily into the spaces that had been carved out for each other, soon slipping easily between languages they’re only beginning to understand. They spend their time gathering parts of each other, building something that doesn’t quite make sense, not yet. Jeongyeon thinks it suits them.

Jumbled, and odd, yet together.

Jeongyeon thinks it fits them perfectly.

Mina, with her gummy smile and shiny eyes and broken heart, seems to agree.)

Jeongyeon can feel the weight of Sana’s stare again as she finishes, feels the weight of her understanding. Of their shared loneliness. Of their shared affection. “Shut up.”

Sana bursts out into laughter at her words, so brightly that Jeongyeon almost forgets that she’d been hunched over in tears only moments ago. “I didn’t even say anything!”

“You said enough,” Jeongyeon shoots back, sitting up with a fond shake of her head. She can’t help the grin that grows on her face, the warmth that seems to blossom in Sana’s presence. “You’re just as bad as Seungyeon."

“Oh please.” Sana waves her off with her free hand, her teasing grin still present on her face. “You were so cute. What happened?”

“Shut up!” Jeongyeon only laughs again, reaching back to the table overflowing with flowers and cards, tossing an empty candy wrapper at Sana’s head. Sana cries out and holds her head playfully, but Jeongyeon only sticks her tongue out at her, sinking back down to the covers and hiding her giddy grin behind her arms.

(“What’s an intended?” Jeongyeon asks Seungyeon when she tucks her into bed one night, pretending to have forgotten all about their conversation after everything that had happened in the past few months. After everything with Mina in the past few months.

Seungyeon doesn’t speak, doesn’t even look at her until Jeongyeon is bundled up in her covers, the chill of the Fall beginning to creep into their home. Seungyeon sits at the edge of her bed, with Jeongyeon hiding her smile at the way Seungyeon narrows her eyes at her, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips.

“An intended is,” Seungyeon starts, shifting closer and ignoring the whine low in Jeongyeon’s throat as her hands ruffle through Jeongyeon’s hair. “An intended is someone who was chosen for you to marry in the future.”

“Marry?” Jeongyeon echoes with a wonder instead of incredulity now, eyebrows shooting up at her older sister’s words. Seungyeon laughs at her expression, her eyes missing the weighted seriousness she has regarded Jeongyeon with all those months ago. “Like Mama and Papa?”

“Like Mama and Papa,” She confirms with a nod, with a bright grin, reaching down to pinch her nose. Jeongyeon cries out in protest, smacking her hands away. Seungyeon’s laughter only grows louder, her tone coated with a playful, teasing lilt. “Lucky you. Mina’s your intended.”

“Does that mean I get to marry Mina in the future?” Jeongyeon asks as if she doesn’t already know. As if her chest might not already burst with the giddiness she feels at her own words. She rubs absently at her nose and kicks her sister from beneath her covers, squealing when Seungyeon manages to catch the outline of her foot. She’s merciless, leaving Jeongyeon to squirm in her hold. “Seungyeon!”

“Go to bed, Jeongyeon,” Seungyeon smiles through her tinkling laughter, soothing her ruffled hair back down and pressing a calming kiss to her forehead, just like their mom and dad always did. “You don’t want to be sleepy for your play date with Mina tomorrow, right?”

Jeongyeon feels her cheeks warm, kicking at Seungyeon once more before she finally leaves. She leaves Jeongyeon to sink into the sheets of her plush bed, to sink into the thoughts of tomorrow. Of Mina.

Well, Jeongyeon thinks to herself, pulling a plush Mina had given her closer to her chest with a bashful smile. I guess I really am lucky.)

“You were a little kid in love, Myoui-Yoo Jeongyeon.” Sana’s drawl is teasing, eyes full of mirth as she dodges the next candy wrapper Jeongyeon flings towards her. Jeongyeon can only match her grin, feeling lighter than she has in weeks, even for just a moment.

“It was so easy,” Jeongyeon sighs out, shaking her head with a smile. Her gaze shifts back towards Mina, and how peaceful she looked right then, even with her yellowing bruises and her healing scars. “Loving her. Being with her.”

(Jeongyeon is exactly four months and twenty three days older than her, which Jeongyeon asks Mina to recite in Korean, so long as she manages to do the same in Japanese. Mina recites it perfectly, growing more fluent every time they meet, their short lessons with each other surely bolstered by private tutors and countless books. Mina confirms it, confirms the hours she spends inside hospitals and waiting rooms poring over books and conversing with her tutors. She says she doesn’t mind, smiling that sweet smile of hers, so long as she gets to speak with Jeongyeon a little easier.

Yoo Jeongyeon is only 6 year old, but she feels her heart flutter at those words, and later that night she makes a point to ask her mother for additional Japanese lessons, too.

They’re gruelling, sure. Another load to add to the long list of activities she’d already been participating in, and oftentimes with very little to show for it despite her efforts.

Still, she’s determined when she greets Mina, as determined as a 6 year old with her apparent fiancée is, even if her pronunciation is awkward, her words stilted. Mina doesn’t laugh, nor does she sigh like her tutor does sometimes. She only smiles, pleasantly surprised and positively ecstatic, taking her hand and sitting like they always do. They talk over the sandwiches Mina’s mother had prepared, Mina in Korean and Jeongyeon in Japanese, and not for the first time, Jeongyeon is happy that Mina is her intended. 

They talk for hours, until the sun paints the sky crimson and orange and gold, and Mina doesn’t let her hand go for a second. When it’s time for Jeongyeon to leave, Mina kisses Jeongyeon for the second time, and Jeongyeon begins to think the lessons are more than worth it.)

“Mina wouldn’t stop talking about that actually,” Sana tells her, her smile softening as she tucks her hair behind her ears. Her eyes are back on Mina, too. “She made us study with her. She wanted us to be ready when we finally met you.”

“You two were all she ever talked about the first time she came to visit me in Korea,” Jeongyeon admits, smoothing out the sheets she’d wrinkled beneath her. It feels impossibly long ago now, with everything that had happened in between. “She missed you two. A lot.”

(Jeongyeon learns a lot about Mina during her first visit to Korea. She learns about her as they sit together on lengthy car rides, as they run through ballrooms of extravagant galas, hiding away in all the corners they could find. They’re always together, then, hardly ever found without their hands linked, refusing to leave the other.

Jeongyeon learns of Mina’s brief stay in America, what she remembers of it. She smiles and laughs at the words Mina remembers, at the accent she hasn’t shaken off. Jeongyeon learns of her older brother, of how deeply she misses him. Of how often he travelled, staying in America for months at a time. In those moments, Jeongyeon is reminded of how lucky she is to have both sisters at home with her, even with their relentless teasing and taunting. 

Jeongyeon learns of Mina’s life in Japan, of the loneliness of the home she lives in, in the life ballet breathes into her very soul. Of the friends she’s left behind, for now. She learns of Sana and Momo, almost always together and never far apart, the only sense of belonging Mina had ever felt before she’d met Jeongyeon.

“Do you miss them?” Jeongyeon asks softly, reaching across the space between them before she even realizes what she’s done. They’re lying in bed, washed up and tucked in and half asleep, but Mina’s cheeks seem to pink when Jeongyeon’s hand envelopes hers. She smiles, pretty in the gentle glow of Jeongyeon’s night light.

“All the time,” Mina admits, and Jeongyeon gives a solemn nod. She flushes as Mina scoots closer, so close that Jeongyeon is afraid they might swap faces. “But you make it better.”

Mina presses a small kiss to her cheek then, squeezing her hand before she pulls back, her smile bashful as she murmurs a goodnight. Jeongyeon can barely hear her, ears ringing with Mina’s words.

Mina seems to fall asleep then, but Jeongyeon stays awake for a moment longer, fingers pressed to her cheek. She sleeps, deeply, soundly, and wakes to Mina’s hand back in her own, soft and safe and warm, and Jeongyeon feels her heart rest just a little easier.)

“Mina had been so happy after that trip.” The smile on her lips vanishes at the gentle spike on the monitor, Sana shifting immediately when Mina stirs, and settling just as quickly when Mina does, too. Jeongyeon finds it endearing, how attuned Sana was to Mina’s every move, and is only reminded of how long Sana’s actually been doing this. “She wouldn’t stop talking about pretty Yoo Jeongyeon, who always held her hand and helped her ride a horse for the first time."

Jeongyeon’s cheeks colour at Sana’s words, waving them off and basking in their momentary silence, reveling in the memories of their faraway youth. “I didn’t like you, you know. When we first met.”

That catches Sana’s attention, head whipping towards her, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. She’s smiling, but the shock is evident in her eyes. “Eh? Why?”

“Mina liked you so much,” Jeongyeon defends, though she feels as petulant as she did so long ago, decades younger than she was. “I thought she might want to marry you instead.”

(“When I grow up, I’m going to marry Mina.”

It’s a simple declaration, but Jeongyeon’s head still snaps up from the coloring book she’s scribbling in, attention immediately diverted by Sana’s words. It’s the first time they’ve ever really been together, all three of them, and to think Sana would say something like that, knowing that Mina was already promised to her. Jeongyeon can’t help the scoff that leaves her, but doesn’t comment further, not when a napping Mina stirs on Sana’s lap. Jeongyeon can only watch as her eyelashes flutter open, cheeks pink from their day out on the beach.

“You can’t do that,” Jeongyeon harrumphs, Mina coming to sit up between them, rubbing at her eyes in confusion. Mina looks as puzzled as Sana does smug, and Jeongyeon only narrows her eyes at the look on her face.

“What can’t Sana do?” Mina asks, voice still tainted with sleep, looking between them. Sana moves quickly, enveloping one of Mina’s hands in her own, so quickly that Jeongyeon is impressed. Almost.

“Jeongyeon says you can’t marry me.” Sana pouts at Mina, who only looks at Jeongyeon, who only crosses her arms, not making a move to hold Mina’s other hand. “But you will, right?”

“Mina is already marrying me,” Jeongyeon presses, giving a firm nod, which Mina bobs her head along to sleepily. She brings her gaze back towards Sana, who looks like she’s on the verge of tears.

“I like you both,” Mina says, simply, breezily, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “Can’t I marry you both?”

Jeongyeon and Sana don’t have time to answer, not when Mina’s nurse finally calls her in from the sunshine, Mina ambling along to leave them alone. Jeongyeon can only glare, while Sana can only stick her tongue out, with only one thing clear.

Game on.)

Sana starts to laugh, then, only laughing harder at the playful glare Jeongyeon tosses her way. She shakes her head at Sana’s never-ending antics, and knows that in the deepest hollows of her heart that Mina had been right. It would have been the least of their problems if Mina had actually decided to marry them both.

“I’d been grateful, after she’d meet you,” Sana tells her after her laughter has died down. Her voice is serious again as she turns her attention to the clock above Mina’s bed, eyes following the steady ticking of its hands. “Her parents started easing up on her a little more. They meant well, I know. They were just scared for her.”

“I would have been scared too.” Jeongyeon feels it again, the swell of guilt in her chest. The words on the tip of her tongue. She had been lucky with Dahyun. They both had been. “I was scared.”

“They’d waited so long for her,” Sana whispers, dropping her gaze again. Jeongyeon takes a moment too, to try and understand the weight that bore so heavily on Sana’s shoulders. The weight she’s carried for so long, so gracefully, without complaint. “She was their miracle.”

The room grows quiet once more, filled only with slow, steady beeping and Mina’s quiet breaths. It was a miracle that Mina was still here at all. Jeongyeon swallows thickly at the thought, her breath trembling past her lips before Sana speaks again.

“It was even worse, you know,” Sana starts, eyes twinkling with an amusement tainted with longing. “When she and Momo first met.”

Jeongyeon watches her, the way that name falls from Sana’s lips, the way her lips curl around it, tender and aching. She knows the look well, knows the weight a single name could carry. Jeongyeon feels it too, her absence, though it is violent, gnawing at her insides. Jeongyeon asks regardless, even though she’s heard the story a million times before, recounted happily by Momo as they sat in the same treehouse she had tumbled out of.

Sana opens her mouth to speak, but it cut off by the sound of Jeongyeon’s phone, Dahyun’s voice twinkling through the speakers. She and Jeongyeon share a knowing glance, Jeongyeon drawing her hands away from the bed to answer the phone. Sana turns her attention back to Mina, brushing her hair away from her face, eyes lingering on the steady rise and fall of her chest.

“I’ll be there soon,” Jeongyeon murmurs, voice probably as tired as she looked, feeling her own shoulders droop. She knows how hard it must be for her own daughter, too, and wishes there was something, anything she could do to help her feel a little less lost. “Tell her I’m not mad, Seungyeon. Thank you for keeping an eye on her.”

“Seungyeon today, huh?” Sana offers a small smile, watching as Jeongyeon stuffs her phone back into her pocket, rubbing a hand over her face. It was at times like this that Jeongyeon truly looked her age, yearning for even an ounce of peace that their life once had.

“Seungyeon spoils her.” Jeongyeon shakes her head, wishing her sister wouldn’t indulge Dahyun in half of the things she did. Still, she’s grateful that Dahyun was safe in Seungyeon’s home, rather than being lost in anyone else’s. “Will you be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Sana promises, voice as sincere as always. Jeongyeon trusts her, of course. Trusts her even more than she trusted herself when it came to Mina, at least. Jeongyeon hums softly, reluctant to get to her feet, reluctant to leave Mina, even for a second. She leans over to press a tender kiss to Mina’s forehead, ignoring the heat of Sana’s gaze on the side of her face.

“Sana,” Jeongyeon starts, but finds her tongue caught in her mouth, unable to form the words she wanted to say. Sana’s eyes soften in understanding, letting out a breath as she shoos her off.

“Go, Jeongyeon,” Sana insists, sliding off the bed to occupy the chair Jeongyeon had vacated. “I’ll call you if there’s any news. You wouldn’t want to keep Dahyun waiting, would you?"

Jeongyeon almost flinches at Sana’s words. Her own words rumble through her ears, the same spiteful words she had thrown at Mina over the phone. The same words she’d agonized over, and over, and over. She hums instead, pressing a light kiss to the top of Sana’s head. “Take care.”

“I always do.” Sana pats her butt, drawing an eye roll from Jeongyeon as she ambles towards the door. “Tell Dahyun she better be sober before her shoot tomorrow morning.”

“I will,” Jeongyeon promises, wishing she wouldn’t have to. Wishing for a lot of things as her hand finally reaches the handle of Mina’s room. She lingers, just for another moment, watching the rise and fall of Mina’s chest, the steady strong line on the screen. Jeongyeon burns it into her mind, Sana taking Mina’s hand into her own before she finally leaves.

The door is quiet as it clicks shut behind her, solid as Jeongyeon presses her back against it, closing her eyes to gather herself. It had never been easy to leave Mina. Not when she was 17, not when she was 27, and not now, knowing everything that she was leaving behind a single closed door. She takes a deep breath, lets the sharp cleanliness of the hospital fill her lungs and draw her back into reality, leaving Mina and their past behind again.

She makes her way down the hallway, sending Seungyeon another text to make sure that Dahyun was still awake, only to knock her shoulder right into someone else’s. Jeongyeon’s head shoots up, an apology on the tip of her tongue, until she realizes exactly who it is. Jeongyeon wonders if the universe finds it funny, to keep bringing the past back up when she’s trying to leave it behind.

“Nayeon.”


	3. if i could

“Yoo Jeongyeon,” Nayeon echoes, unable to keep the surprise from her voice. The quick glance at the watch around her wrist tells Jeongyeon exactly what’s running through Nayeon’s mind. Still, Nayeon smirks, tilting her head as she props a hand against her hip. “You look _pleased_ to see me.”

Jeongyeon rolls her eyes at Nayeon’s words, but returns the smile Nayeon’s offered to her, almost a reflection of how exhausted they both were. Jeongyeon doesn’t try to correct her. Not Nayeon. Not now. “Rough case, Doctor Im?”

“Cases are always rough on my end, Chef Yoo,” Nayeon replies after a beat, the easy smile on her face faltering as she lifts her gaze to meet Jeongyeon’s. Jeongyeon feels her own heart stop, then. Feels the quiver in her stomach at Nayeon’s weak laughter. “It never seems to get easier.”

“No,” Jeongyeon murmurs, curling one hand over the other, thumb running over the simple band of her wedding ring. _A reminder_ , Jeongyeon tells herself. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

Nayeon watches the motion for a moment, her jaw shifting, her own hand tightening around the handle of the bag she was carrying. _A reminder_ , Jeongyeon tells herself. _For more than just her_. “How is she?”

“You won’t check on her yourself?” Jeongyeon asks, faster than her brain can catch up to her words, and almost bites her tongue at the look that crosses Nayeon’s face. “She might be awake-.”

“That’s not my department,” Nayeon cuts in, tugging lightly at the stethoscope around her neck. She musters up a smile. “Besides, Sana must already be in there if you’re here. She knows more than I do about her condition.”

“Nayeon,” Jeongyeon sighs, only for the phone in her hand to buzz once more, reminding her of why she was leaving in the first place. She shakes her head, running a hand through her hair and taking a deep breath to recenter her thoughts. “I’m on my way home. Do you want a ride to yours?”

“You drove yourself today?” Nayeon asks, surprise once again coating her tone. Jeongyeon takes it as an acceptance to her offer, the way Nayeon nods towards the elevators at the end of the hall. She’s quick to turn on her heel, hand tight around the stethoscope around her neck. Jeongyeon always wonders how she can do it, how she can turn away so easily when Jeongyeon still drags her steps, reluctant to be away despite other pressing issues at hand. It’s selfish. Nayeon isn’t. “Is it Dahyun?”

“Huh?” Jeongyeon startles at Nayeon’s sudden question, tearing her eyes away from the door down the hallway and towards Nayeon’s expectant look. She almost laughs. Of course, there was no hiding from Nayeon. She’d never been able to, and she supposes she can’t start now. “Yeah. She showed up at Seungyeon’s house again.”

“Jeong.” Nayeon’s voice is gentle, her grip finally relenting on the instrument hanging around her neck. Jeongyeon almost wishes she hadn’t answered, knowing what’s about to leave her mouth. “I know I’ve offered a million times before-.”

“And I’ll reject it a million time more,” Jeongyeon interrupts, giving the older woman a look, one that Nayeon only shakes her head at. Again. “It’s difficult enough as it is.”

“Only because you’re making it that way. Dahyun is Mina’s daughter, too.” There is a beat, then, as Nayeon’s fingers tangle into the straps of her bag instead. “Or did you forget about that?”

“Give me a break, Nayeon.” Jeongyeon’s hand tightens around her phone, the screen flashing with another text about Dahyun, groggy and miserable but willing to sober up, now. She sucks in a shaky breath, another apology aching to escape.

“I’m sorry,” Nayeon offers before she can even open her mouth again. Her voice is softer now. Jeongyeon watches as her hands curl around her stomach, as Nayeon refuses to meet her gaze. “So many things have happened in the past few weeks. You’ve been nothing but helpful to us.”

“It’s okay,” Jeongyeon murmurs in lieu of her own apology, regarding Nayeon seriously as they walk through the hauntingly silent hallways, finally reaching the elevators. “They don’t know.”

Nayeon’s finger jabs against the button, eyes locked onto the ascending numbers. “I didn’t know until last week. I didn’t want to get their hopes up.”

“Nayeon.” The doors slide open. Nayeon shakes her head.

They step inside, bathed in the harsh lights of the elevator. Nayeon’s voice is softer, then. “I didn’t want to get my hopes up, either.” 

They’re quiet, then, quiet as they avoid the unrelenting press by the front doors, quiet as they buckle into Jeongyeon’s car. They’re quiet, even as they drive through the darkened streets, looking as lonely as they both felt, then.

“It was kind of fun, you know.” Jeongyeon is the one to break the tense silence that’s blanketed over them this time, the one to break into the worry that rips into their chests. “Talking to Mina and Sana about the past. Everything that happened when we were kids.”

Nayeon snorts lightly, head resting against the window, as relaxed as she could be, given what had happened with Mina. Jeongyeon makes a note to drive a little more carefully, as if she wasn’t driving carefully enough. “I’m sure you hooligans had plenty of memories to share.”

Jeongyeon scoffs, but a grin stretches across her face, fingers flexing around the steering wheel. “It wasn’t like that. We were good kids.”

“Oh, Mina I can believe. I don’t know about you and Sana.” Nayeon gives Jeongyeon a quick smile, busying herself with Jeongyeon’s radio. An older idol song plays quietly moments after.

It feels strange, sitting in the car with Nayeon like this. Jeongyeon almost feels like a teen again, ambling along on late night trips drives with Nayeon on their first years of university. She turns her attention towards Nayeon for the briefest of moments, her features bathed in the warmth of the red light. 

Jeongyeon feels as if she could tell her everything, then. 

Jeongyeon feels as if she never would.

Nayeon only curls up further in the plush of her passenger seat, resting her cheek against the top of her knees. The light flickers back to green. Jeongyeon drives on. 

“It’s still scary.” Nayeon speaks up after a moment, voice almost muffled against the fabric of her work pants, thumb running over the outline of her knee. There’s another red light, and Jeongyeon can’t help but watch for as long as she can. The guilt that stirs in her stomach settles heavily, still. “It’s been so long but I can’t seem to get over it.”

“We don’t have to talk about it.” Jeongyeon tries to keep her voice from shaking as she drives on, farther and farther from the noise of the city. She wishes her childhood had been as simple as she’d remembered - running around the world with Mina, Sana and Momo on their tails.

“If we don’t, when will we?” Nayeon asks. Jeongyeon feels her jaw tighten in answer. She hears the rustle of Nayeon’s clothes, hears the breath she heaves out. “Everything that’s happened only reminds me that we have such little time.”

(Nayeon meets Jeongyeon on the same day she’s accepted into her auditions as a commercial model, with Jeongyeon crashing into her life as abruptly as her stardom had left it.

It hadn’t been a bad crash, not according to the news, but it had been a crash nonetheless, leaving Nayeon’s left leg pinned against the door she’d been sitting by.

It was a miracle, really, that nothing worse had happened. Still, Nayeon remembers it for the rest of her life, so vividly that she wonders what she might have done in a past life to be haunted so violently by it. She could barely breathe, then. Barely register her father’s frantic voice. Barely hear the panicked cries ringing through her ears. Barely see beyond the sight of her own leg - what she could recognize of it.

There is chaos, then. Nayeon spots her still, eyes shimmering with tears, through the shattered glass of what had been her window. She spots her, the smaller girl being hauled out by the paramedics, and remembers that too. She clings to the memory of it, finally sinking into the darkness that threatened to engulf her.

When Nayeon wakes next, she’s in the hospital. Or, at least that’s what it seems like, with a smell that stings her nose so sharply she might just throw up. She spots the girl she’d seen earlier, sitting in the chair right next to her, red-faced and snot nosed and quiet, decorated in tiny little bandages. It makes her smile, almost. Laugh, even, until she takes her first breath, her ribs feeling like they might pierce right through her lungs.

The sound she makes is a pitiful one, just loud enough to draw the attention of the crying girl beside her. Nayeon barely manages to stifle it, the whimper that bubbles in her chest.

“Hurts?” The girl’s voice is thick with tears, looking as if she would never run out of them.

Nayeon swallows thickly, but nods, finally mustering up the breath to speak. “Really bad.”

The girl looks away, down to the leg propped up by at least three pillows. Nayeon only notices it then, a panic settling into her chest, unable to move. “That too?”

“I can’t feel it,” Nayeon tells her so, feeling the reality of what had happened settle into the haze of her mind. “Why can’t I feel my leg?”

The girl sitting beside her doesn’t get to say much more, not when a frantic beeping fills the room, enough for another small chaos to spill into it. Nayeon can barely register what’s going on, barely register the doctors and nurses suddenly standing by her side. Her own parents, crowing her bed. The girl is gone, then, pulled back by another man, voice hushed and arm wrapped in bandages.

“Let’s go, Jeongyeon,” She hears over her own frantic breathing. She sees her mother’s face over her own, her eyes warm and smile soothing, hands trembling around her cheeks. 

“It’s okay, darling.” Her mother whispers as she hiccups over her own tears, as the darkness threatens to swallow her whole once more.

“Mama,” She calls out, hardly able to recognize her own voice in her fear, yearning to reach out and touch her, at least. “Mama-.”

“I know,” Is the trembling reply she earns, with a kiss to her head as her eyelids grow heavy once more. “Get some rest, darling. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”)

“There were so many things that I couldn’t understand then. Questions that haunted me for years. So many things that just… escaped me.” Jeongyeon shakes out of the grips of the memory Nayeon had laid out so plainly before her. Her car hums as they pull into the driveway of Seungyeon’s modest home. “But those things brought us here, didn’t they?”

“Where?” Jeongyeon jokes to lighten the heavy air that’s tangled around them, feeling Nayeon’s eyes roll from a mile away. “Picking up my drunk daughter from my older sister’s house?”

Nayeon shoos her off, nodding towards the still open lights of Seungyeon’s house. “Go get her before your sister changes her mind and decides to keep her forever.”

“Are you always this bossy, grandma?” Jeongyeon tosses a grin over her shoulder as she steps out of the car. Her smile only widens as Nayeon calls after her, voice indignant, as if she’s that much younger.

Her shoes crunch against the gravel. Seungyeon opens the door before she’s even halfway up the pathway, hair tied in a loose bun and already dressed for bed. Her older sister doesn’t offer many words, if any, and Jeongyeon can only sink into the brief embrace her sister draws her into. Jeongyeon breathes her in, the scent of her safety. Of home.

(“You’re drunk.” It’s a simple remark, dripping with amusement. Dripping with sadness. She pries Jeongyeon’s finger off the doorbell to cease her incessant ringing, her annoyance melting away as Jeongyeon stumbles over the doorstep.

“M’not drunk.” Jeongyeon dismisses her with a wave of her hand, trying to find her way around the dizzying brightness of her sister’s home. She steps out of her shoes, hearing her sister’s sigh. “I’m Jeongyeon.”

“Very funny,” Seungyeon replies dryly, hooking her arms around Jeongyeon to keep her from smacking into one of the walls. “Why are you here, Jeongyeon?”

Jeongyeon leans heavily against her sister, head swimming as she breathes in her scent. Of freshly washed clothes and the familiar tones of her favourite spray - the one Mina had gotten her last Christmas. 

“The real question is,” Jeongyeon starts, her head spinning as Seungyeon heaves her into an armchair, cool fingers brushing her sweaty hair away from her forehead. “Why are we here at all?”

“Don’t get philosophical on me, Myoui-Yoo Jeongyeon,” Seungyeon grumbles, but the worry Jeongyeon can see in her eyes gives her away, a smile tugging at the corners of Jeongyeon’s lips. 

“Only Yoo,” Jeongyeon corrects her sister as the fight finally leaves her body, sinking into the plush of the cushions beneath her. The worry in her eyes melts into sympathy. Jeongyeon can hardly bear to look. “Only Yoo now, remember?”)

"Mama?" Jeongyeon hears in the midst of their solemn embrace, drawing her back from the memories that haunted her still. Memories that would haunt her forever. Seungyeon runs her hand over the back of her head, just once more, and Jeongyeon feels like a child again, just for another moment. Another call. 

"Go. I've already given her a change of clothes. Hers are still in the wash." Seungyeon releases her, nodding towards the living room. She crosses her arms, regarding Jeongyeon with warmth. With worry. "She's been waiting for you the whole night."

Jeongyeon gives Seungyeon a thankful smile at her words, retracing her old steps into her sister’s living room, finding her daughter curled up in the same place she had been before, when Dahyun had been only half her age. She contends with the guilt in her stomach as she kneels down before her, tucking Dahyun’s hair behind her hair, brushing away the sweat beading at her temples. “Hi, sweetheart.”

Dahyun doesn’t say much, doesn’t do much more other than lean into her touch, eyes already brimming with tears. She is quick to shift in her seat, looking impossibly small in the baggy pyjamas Seungyeon had wriggled her into. “Mama, I’m sorry.”

Jeongyeon hushes her, pulling her into a gentle embrace and thumbing through her daughter’s hair. She can almost hear her parent’s voices, the way they used to scold her for drinking when she was the same age as Dahyun. Jeongyeon only holds her daughter closer, feeling the burn of her tears against her shoulder.

“It’s okay, I’m not mad.” Jeongyeon draws back to brush away Dahyun’s tears once more, and for a moment, she wishes that Dahyun wouldn’t grow up so quickly. She peers up into her daughter’s face, swallowing down the lump that has formed in her throat, confronted with how young her daughter truly was. Too young to have lost as much as she already has. Jeongyeon wills herself to smile. “Let’s go home.”

“Mina?” Dahyun asks after a beat. Jeongyeon swallows thickly, only then feeling the threat of tears prickle at her own eyes. Nayeon’s words ring in her ears. _Did you forget that?_

“Your mom is fine. Sana is with her.” Jeongyeon scoops Dahyun up from Seungyeon’s armchair, tucking her daughter into her arms and feeling her sink in relief. She tries not to let it show on her face, the strain on her aging bones as she starts her walk back to the car, ignoring Dahyun’s tired protests. She matches Seungyeon’s nod with her own, giving her another thankful smile before she ambles down the pathway.

“I’m too old for this,” Dahyun complains, 18 years old and almost too heavy to carry. Jeongyeon’s smile only widens, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as she adjusts her in her arms.

(“I’m too old for this,” Dahyun complains, only 7 years old and feeling tiny enough to fit in the palm of Jeongyeon’s hand. Jeongyeon only laughs, tucking Dahyun’s sleepy little head back against her shoulder, careful not to disturb her cute little headband as she smoothes down her hair. Jeongyeon continue to walk through the awestruck crowds, through their whoops and calls, having seen the same display every year for the past 5 years.

In the quiet chaos of it all, Jeongyeon catches Mina’s eye, catches the universe in the colors that burst from the fireworks above them. In the quiet chaos of the park, of the hundreds of people around them, Mina smiles, soft and warm and tender, and Jeongyeon mirrors it, just for now. Even just for now.)

“Never too old for me,” Jeongyeon murmurs, shaking out of her memories as the same sleepiness coats Dahyun’s voice, feeling heavier and heavier in her arms. A fond smile crosses her lips, eyes lifting at the sound of the car door opening. Nayeon stands expectantly by the back seat. She doesn’t say anything, not until Jeongyeon has Dahyun buckled into the backseat, brushing her hair away from her face once more.

“She reminds me of you.” Nayeon’s words linger in the air as Jeongyeon shuts the door, fingers lingering on the handle. _Of course_ , Jeongyeon thinks. Dahyun has stayed with her for so long, after all. Dahyun has stayed with her all this time, after all.

Jeongyeon musters up a smile, unable to shake those niggling thoughts even as they settle back into the car. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

The ride to Nayeon’s place is quiet now, the car filled with nothing but the hum of the engine and the slow steadiness of Dahyun’s breathing. Her daughter’s head lolls against the window. Nayeon checks her watch.

“She misses her, you know.” Nayeon is the first to break the silence, like she always is. Jeongyeon doesn’t look at her, not even as they reach another red light. The wait seems to stretch on for hours, Jeongyeon’s fingers drumming against the steering wheel. The red seems violent, now. “Before the accident, it was all she would talk about sometimes. Wishing she could be part of Dahyun’s life again.”

“I’m not,” Jeongyeon tries, her words seeming to jumble in her own mouth. Her eyes flit up to the rear view mirror to catch sight of her daughter, still dead to the world. “I haven’t been keeping Dahyun from her, Nayeon. Not for the past few years.”

“I know.” Nayeon’s voice is tense at first, and Jeongyeon can feel it, the weight of her anger as she heaves out a breath, looking back towards the window. The light changes. Jeongyeon drives on. “But it was still four years of Dahyun’s life, Jeongyeon - and not to mention the months leading up to the divorce-.”

“Why are you bringing this up now?” Jeongyeon almost snaps, though she’s careful not to raise her voice, careful not to wake Dahyun from the little sleep she’s probably gotten for the past few days. Weeks.

“I just… don’t want you to waste any more time,” Nayeon replies firmly, finally turning to meet her gaze as they pull to an abrupt stop before her home. “This could be your last chance.”

Jeongyeon doesn’t get to say much else, not when she finds herself drawn into a quick embrace, Nayeon’s face pressed against the side of her neck. She only watches her, watches as she steps out of the car, watches her until the light of her front porch finally shuts off, leaving her in the dark. 

Leaving her with her thoughts. 

She collapses against the driver’s seat, eyes closing, until she hears the hitch of Dahyun’s breath. Jeongyeon’s heart stutters. “It’s not good, you know. Eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.”

Dahyun doesn’t say a word, only unbuckling her seatbelt to climb into the front seat, curling back into herself. Jeongyeon sucks in a deep breath, one that fills her lungs until they ache, before she starts to drive again, tightening her hold on the wheel to keep her hands from trembling.

Jeongyeon can feel her daughter’s eyes on her, voice low when she finally speaks. “Why _did_ you do it?”

(“Why are you doing this?” Sana asks her one night, after Jeongyeon tells Dahyun that it was time for them to go home. Jeongyeon only continues to walk down the hall, heels clicking against hardwood. She doesn’t pay Sana any attention, not until the other woman grabs her arm, forcefully meeting her gaze. “Jeongyeon.”

“Sana,” Jeongyeon manages to get out, pulling her arm out of Sana’s grasp, leveling her with a look. She hears Dahyun’s voice echo down the hall, refusing to go, followed by the gentle of Mina’s, trying to soothe their daughter. She steels herself at the familiar sound, ignoring the way her heart wrenches when Dahyun starts to cry. “Not today. Please.”

“This isn’t helping _anyone_ ,” Sana points out, but Jeongyeon only shakes her head, giving Dahyun’s name another call as she reaches the front door. Her driver waits patiently outside, turning a blind eye to everything that was going on - like always.

“So you keep telling me.” Jeongyeon wishes she could believe them, the reasons she fed to herself, her fingers curling into the fabric of her sleeves. Her jaw tightens at Dahyun’s rising voice. She turns her head back, back down towards the hall of a home that was no longer hers. Jeongyeon feels her heart stop, the sound enough to make her feel sick to the stomach.

“Does it really have to be like this?” Sana asks, voice soft, incredulous. They watch as Mina tries to peel Dahyun’s hands away, tries to break away from the embrace she clearly didn’t want to leave, either.

“I’ll see you again in a few days,” Jeongyeon hears Mina’s voice, hears the promise she makes. The way Dahyun’s sobs subside, the quiet settling over them once more. Jeongyeon turns her head away at the sound of Dahyun’s sneakers squeaking against the floor, finally answering Sana’s question.

“I didn’t choose this life.” Jeongyeon stares into the never ending well of Mina’s eyes, feeling Dahyun’s hand slip reluctantly into her own. “She did.”)

“Is this really the time to talk about this?” Jeongyeon is jolted out of her thoughts at the sudden blare of horns behind her, the car bursting forward. Dahyun curls a hand around the seatbelt.

“I’m old enough to know,” Dahyun presses. Her face is curtained by her light orange hair, keeping Jeongyeon from seeing the expression on her face. How long had Dahyun been harbouring these thoughts, too?

Jeongyeon takes a moment to mull over her words, to mull over how she could explain everything that had happened before then. Since then. She doesn’t find them, even as they drive through the opening gates of their home. They didn’t feel nearly as large as the distance between her and her daughter, then. “Dahyun…”

“I’m sorry,” Dahyun interrupts as their car finally slows to a stop in the garage, lost amongst the others that lined it. Jeongyeon holds her breath. “I know you had your reasons.”

“Your mother,” Jeongyeon starts, wishing her voice wouldn’t shake as much as it did. “We didn’t always get along after what happened, but I’m sorry that I dragged you into the mess that came with it.” She hears Dahyun’s breath catch. “Mina… She loved you very much. She _loves_ you. So much, Dahyun.”

“I know.” Dahyun finally turns to look at her then, and her smile only adds to the weight lying heavily in the pit of Jeongyeon’s stomach. She wishes she could contend with it, the haunted look in her daughter’s eyes, piercing right through her heart. “She wouldn’t be in this mess if she didn’t, would she?”

Jeongyeon is left to sit in the darkness of the car after Dahyun presses a kiss to her cheek, her retreating footsteps echoing through the garage. She lets her head thud back against the seat, feeling the headache building at her temples, especially as her phone buzzes, shattering the escape she’d taken for herself. Jeongyeon opens her eyes with a weathered sigh, a disbelieving laugh leaving her at the name she sees flashing across the screen.

“Of course,” She murmurs, thumb swiping across the screen to reject the call. “It does seem like that kind of night.”

* * *

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Sana startles at Mina’s words, the hold around her hand tightening as she straightens in her seat. Mina makes a move to sit up, and Sana is quick to act, arm curled firmly around Mina to adjust her body. She tries not to think too much about how winded Mina seems, lips brushing against her ear. “What on Earth are you doing awake?”

“I wanted to see you,” Mina murmurs against her shoulder, taking a moment to rest against her. Sana holds her still, ignoring the sudden tightness of her chest. The tears that prickle in her eyes.

To think the universe would be so cruel to try and claim her, again and again and again.

Sana pulls back from the embrace once she’s propped Mina against the pillows, tucking her hair behind her ears. She takes a moment to wonder, wonder exactly how much of this woman before her is left to give to the world before she crumbles away. Sana feels no different from how she did then, at 7, at 15, Mina’s every breath feeling like the weight of the sky.

“You’re doing it again.” Mina laughs weakly as she turns her head, pressing a light kiss to the palm of Sana’s hand, fingers curling loosely into the hem of Sana’s shirt to keep her close. Sana musters up a small smile, sitting on the edge of Mina’s bed, careful no to jostle her IV too much.

“You used to do this before.” It’s easy, Sana thinks, to sink into the world they built together, the reality that surrounded them melting away, even for just a breath. “Before all of your performances.”

(“Nervous?”

Mina only draws her closer, seeming to hide away in the comfort of Sana’s oversized sweatshirt, careful not to ruin the makeup they’d applied painstakingly for an hour, at least. For a moment, it’s just the three of them, the hustle and bustle of the crowds outside muted by the closed door that Momo is guarding. “No.”

“You don’t have to lie with me.” Sana smiles, catching Momo’s gaze by the door and shaking her head in reassurance, carding through Mina’s lightly tousled hair. She looks beautiful, dressed in a simple black ensemble to match Jihyo’s. “This is a big one, isn’t it? Your first year end concert.”

Mina’s fingers only curl deeper into the fabric of her clothes, and Sana feels her heart swell with affection, her free hand coming to tip the girl’s face up, just so. Mina doesn’t meet her gaze right away, not until Sana pinches at her chin, shaking her up a little. She feels the shudder of Mina’s breath, sees the doubt shimmer in her eyes. “What if I don’t do well ? What if they’re right and I can’t handle it?”

“I know you can do this,” Sana tells her, voice firm, letting go of Mina’s chin to poke at the centre of Mina’s chest. She tries not to think about her own thunderous heartbeat. The consequences if they _are_ right. “Your heart is ready to take on this world, Mina. You should be, too.”)

“You enjoyed it,” Mina protests, though her cheeks warm, and Sana can only laugh, dropping her hand to hold the one Mina had tangled into her shirt. Her gaze softens, trying not to think about how tired Mina looked right then, struggling to keep her eyes open and yet insisting on talking to her, for just a little longer.

“I did.” Sana hums in agreement, thumb running over Mina’s skin, over the tiny healing cuts that adorned her fingers. “Because I _liked_ you.”

“Is that a confession, Minatozaki Sana?” Mina’s eyes are teasing, even as she rests heavily against the pillows that Sana has set up for her. Sana’s smile widens, lifting Mina’s hand to press her own kiss against the palm of her hand. 

“Do I still need to confess after this long?” Sana shoots back playfully, resting Mina’s hand back in her lap, following the lines that crossed her palm. “I thought you would know how much I liked you without telling you.”

“I still like to hear it.” Mina indulges her, even now, with her sleepy smile and gentle touch. Mina gives her the same look she did years ago, when they were young and dumb and free, from all of this. Young and dumb and able to run from all of this. Always running.

(“Tell me again.”

Mina lifts her head curiously at her words, momentarily distracted from her work. She’s willing, at least, to play into whatever Sana was getting at. She’s still to change out of the clothes she’d been wearing all day, having been too tired to change after the schedules she had after class. “Tell you what?”

“That you love me.” Sana states it simply, draping herself across Mina’s back, her chin planted firmly against her shoulder. Mina groans playfully at the weight, but Sana gets her back with a quick swat to the leg, a pout crossing her lips. It’s in moments like this that Mina indulges her, wholly and completely, when they are alone, without even Momo. “Mina…”

“Okay, okay,” Mina relents, and Sana delights in the warmth that blossoms in her cheeks, clouding pale skin with crimson. She looks cute enough to bite. Sana has half a mind to. “I love you, Satang. Good enough?”

“Tell me like you mean it,” Sana murmurs, her voice growing less playful, her eyes dropping to the shiny new ring around Mina’s finger. It only tells Sana one thing. They were running out of time. Always running out of time.

Mina turns her head, pressing her forehead against Sana’s temple. It’s enough to draw Sana’s attention back to her, Sana’s hand curling around her own. “ I love you, Sana.”)

“Fine,” Sana relents, heaving out a sigh and hiding her smile as she tweaks Mina’s nose. She hides her worry, too, at Mina’s little exclamation, especially at the pout she earns moments later. “I like you.”

“Good.” Mina laughs again, soft and bright and beautiful, and Sana yearns to hear more of it. Enough to last her for a lifetime. “I like you too.”

“You should.” Sana flashes her a playful smirk, drawing one of her hands away to grab some of the towels she’d set up beside Mina’s bed. The look in Mina’s eyes softens, pliable in Sana’s grasp as she works. “You’d be stinky if you didn’t.”

“I wouldn’t want anyone but you.” Mina’s reply is soft, sincere, eyes half-lidded as she watches Sana work, running the cool towel over her skin. Sana’s sure it’s nice to feel refreshed after lying in bed all day. She can feel it, the way Mina looks at her, heavier than anything she might have heard that afternoon.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Sana throws the same question back at her, careful not to jostle Mina too much as she works. Mina only hums, looking content and sleepy when Sana chances a glance up at her.

“I never got to thank you.” Mina looks as if she might nod off any minute. Sana thinks she just might, their short evening together already proving to be too much too soon, especially after the lengthy afternoon she’d already spent entertaining Jeongyeon.

“You don’t have to thank me, Mina.” Sana laughs, voice gentle, understanding, having received her gratefulness in more than just words for over thirty years.

“I do,” Mina insists, drawing Sana’s attention at the sudden conviction in her voice, almost thrown by the way Mina was looking at her. Mina catches her hand as Sana runs the towel over her fingers. It’s enough to steal her breath away, just like it has for years. Just like it will continue to. “I know I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

Sana doesn’t say anything. She can’t, not with the words suddenly caught in her throat, words she’d been aching to say for years and years and years. She only leans forward, pressing her lips against Mina’s forehead as she shifts her pillows back down, letting her rest against the sheets. Mina doesn’t fight it, doesn’t do much except lean briefly into her touch, fingers curling back into the hem of her shirt.

“There’s so much waiting for us out there,” She whispers, voice thickening with tears, fingers trailing over the side of Mina’s face as she finally succumbs to sleep. Sana thinks of her bag, of the files that rested heavily inside, containing secrets she wasn’t sure Mina could take. “Don’t let go. Not yet.”

* * *

Jihyo wakes, feeling a smile tugging at the corners of her lips at the brush of light kisses against her skin, at the hand curling around her hip, at the warmth that presses against her back. She relishes in the familiarity of it, sinking into the easy, knowing touch.

“Hello to you, too.” Her own voice is thick with sleep and affection, a hand reaching down to trace over the one against her hip, loosely lacing their fingers. Her smile widens as the hand drags cheekily across her toned stomach, as the kisses pressed to her skin grow just a little heavier. Goosebumps rise at the warm breath that washes over her. Jihyo laughs, and turns, turns to catch the lips trailing along her jaw, her free hand curling against the nape of her neck to keep her close. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Do you really have to ask?” Jihyo hears against her lips, her eyebrows furrowing at the sound of the voice that reaches her ears. She pulls back immediately, feeling her breath catch in her throat at the sight that welcomes her.

“Mina?” Jihyo gasps out as she shoots up in her bed, head whipping around, hands running over the wrinkled sheets. The room spins. Her head pounds. Her shoulders sink in relief when she realizes she’s alone in the room, in the entire apartment, her heart thundering in her chest. She presses the heel of her palm against her eyes, a shaky breath trembling past her lips. “ _God_. What was that?”

 _It’s the news_ , Jihyo reasons as she finally gathers her wits, running her hands through her hair and heaving out the last of the whispers in her chest. _She’s all over the news again._

Part of Jihyo wonders if she’ll ever escape her. Escape what Mina has done to her. Escape what she’s done to Mina. She reaches for the glass of water she always keeps at her bedside table, refusing to think in the time it takes her to finish the glass, wanting to believe that it’s the water that’s settling heavily in her stomach. She wishes it were that easy, setting her glass aside, to wash away the thoughts in her head. The things she’s done.

Jihyo tries not to think about it as she runs her hands over her legs, a weary sight tumbling past her lips, wishing she wasn’t alone in the apartment so late at night. They seemed to ache more often, and Jihyo wonders if it’s some form of karma, thrust upon her after all these years. She smiles a little to herself, fingers working methodically into her aching muscles, thumbs running over the faded scars of her knees.

It would be cruel, Jihyo supposes. But she had been, too.

Jihyo startles when her phone rings, her heart rate spiking as the obnoxious ringtone she keeps forgetting to change blares through their messy bedroom. She reaches over with a small huff, her own tired face a poor reflection of the one smiling back at her on the screen. The unknown number flashes once more, and Jihyo wonders who it could be, calling so late. She shakes her head. It must be important if they were calling so late.

“Park Jihyo speaking,” She answers instinctively, clearing the sleepiness out of her throat, adopting the same tone she used for her classes, the same firm warmth she coated on for her students. “Who is-.”

“Park Jihyo.” Another voice she hasn’t heard in years. It sends ice shooting down her spine, her past coming to haunt her in more than just her dreams. She pinches herself. The pain lingers as the caller continues. “I’m not sure if you still recognize me. It’s Sana, Minatozaki Sana.” 

“As if I could forget.” Jihyo can’t keep the incredulity from her voice. How did she even get her number after all these years? She’d cut so many lines, burnt so many bridges. Why would Sana, of all people, call _her_ after _fifteen years?_ “How the hell did you get this number? You know what, I don’t want to know. I’m hanging up.”

“Jihyo, please, _wait_.” Sana’s voice grows almost frantic, and Jihyo hesitates, her thumb hovering over the screen. It was a weakness as much as it was one of her strengths, her willingness to open her heart, again and again. “Jihyo… It’s Mina.”

Jihyo’s jaw trembles before she dissolves into laughter, head falling into her free hand as her shoulders shake. _Of course._ Of course it’s Mina. Her dream must have been a warning. “Whatever this is about-.”

“She was in an accident.” Sana cuts her off, coolly and cleanly, letting the exhaustion of her voice wash over the bitterness coating Jihyo’s. “She’s stable for now, but the doctors… They’re worried about her condition.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Jihyo asks after a moment, head swimming with the thought of Mina, in God knows what condition. The thought of Mina, gone forever. The thing she’d wished for for so long feels much more real, now, Sana’s words ringing in her ears.

“Their family lawyers were looking at her will.” Sana’s voice is quieter, now. Solemn. Her words only cement how serious Mina’s condition must be. “Your name was in there, Jihyo. Your name, and your child.” There’s another pause, the squeak of a hospital trolley, Sana’s gentle, polite greeting. When Sana speaks, her voice is even quieter than before. “Mina’s family… They just want to know.”

The front door opens then, creaking on its hinges like it has for years despite the constant work they’ve done for it. Jihyo’s heart rate only spikes again, the sound of heavy boots thudding against the floor echoing through their quiet apartment. “I have to go.”

“Jihyo, you can’t run away from this.” Sana’s voice gains an edge, the same edge from all those years ago, the first time Jihyo ran away. “You’ve hid this from her for long enough.”

“I’m not,” Jihyo answers just as sharply, trying to keep her voice steady despite the new storm of thoughts in her head. “Sana, I promise. I’ll call you back.”

She sets her phone aside despite Sana’s insistent incoming calls, trying to calm her breathing as she hears the sound of familiar tired steps padding down the hallway. Mina must have known. Mina must have known all along.

Momo pops her head in, then, a bright smile on her face as she lifts her hand, showing off a paper bag bearing the logo of Jihyo’s favourite bakery. “Hey. The little squirt got you a present.”

Jihyo pushes her worries aside for a moment, mirroring Momo’s smile and melting into her kiss as soon as she’s close enough, shifting closer to the edge of the bed. She lets herself breathe, a hand settling over Momo’s shoulder. “It’s way too late for sweets.”

“It’s never too late for sweets,” Momo scoffs lightly, setting the bag down on their bedside table as she sets a knee upon the bed, sinking into Jihyo’s waiting embrace. Jihyo relishes in it for the moment, how blissfully unaware Momo was of the turmoil in Jihyo’s heart. “Had to carry her up, you know.”

“You spoil her,” Jihyo laughs, laughs despite the tears that threaten to bubble up, laughs despite the ways her hands were trembling, just a little. She clings to Momo just a little tighter, sinking into the warmth of Momo’s arms around her waist - strong, safe, secure. Just like always.

“Everything okay?” Momo asks curiously, pulling back just to search Jihyo’s face, eyes shining even in the low light of their bedside lamp. Jihyo only smiles, giving a small nod and drawing Momo into another kiss, as sweet as it was a wish to forget, forget about everything except the woman in her arms.

“Everything’s fine,” She whispers, as Momo shifts her along to lie down full against her, ignoring the way her phone flashes incessantly on the dresser. Fine for now, sinking into Momo’s tender touch. “Just perfect.”  
  



	4. needing you far more than i wanted you

(It’s one of those nights, it seems.

Jihyo brushes Mina’s hair away from her face, fingertips tracing against soft skin. She can’t help but linger at Mina’s next few breaths, tumbling past pretty parted lips. Jihyo can only watch her as she sleeps, relishing in the steady rise and fall of her chest. She watches the way the moonlight seems to dance on her skin, as easily as Mina did on stage. Fluid as water. Fleeting as the time they had together. Jihyo sucks in a shaky breath of her own.

Mina is here.

Mina is hers.

Jihyo tucks those words away in her heart that night and presses in a little closer, her own breath trembling out of her chest.

“What are we doing, Minari?” Jihyo whispers in the dark of their bedroom, knowing she won’t get an answer. She’s unsure if she would even be able to handle the answer. Still, she presses, thumb following the sharp line of her jaw. “We aren’t kids anymore. How much longer can we keep doing this?”

Mina sleeps, still. The weight in Jihyo’s chest rests heavily, and only gets heavier at the kiss she places on Mina’s forehead, feeling her promises at the tips of her fingers. A life away from all of this, Mina had whispered to her, her fingers laced through Jihyo’s, a hopeful smile on her face. Soon, Jihyo. I promise.

Her promises feel even farther away now, especially when her phone begins to vibrate incessantly on her nightstand; a familiar beat she’d set for only one person. Jihyo could almost laugh at the way fate toys with them, with their hearts. The lines between them have tangled far too tightly to ever break, now.

“You have a lot of guts calling tonight, Hirai Momo.” Jihyo hears Momo’s soft laughter in lieu of an actual greeting, feeling that strange warmth filling her stomach again. She sinks onto her back, making sure to keep an eye on Mina, still sleeping soundly beside her, hers until the morning. Hers until she’s Jeongyeon’s, again.

“I think you make me fearless, Park Jihyo.” Momo’s easy answer draws her back from the daunting reality of the morning to come. Momo is always fearless, as if she doesn’t know that the girl she’s protected her entire life isn’t lying beside Jihyo. As if she doesn’t know that the girl she’s protected her entire life still owns Jihyo’s heart. Still, Jihyo indulges her and laughs at the tone of Momo’s voice, at the sleepiness that coats it, willing to pretend for just a moment. Always just a moment. “I missed you.”

That quiets Jihyo, quiets her for so long that Momo speaks up again, wondering if she’d fallen asleep to the sound of her voice. Jihyo scoffs, refusing to admit to the warmth that has clouded her cheeks. “We’ve never had this kind of relationship.”

“What kind of relationship, Jihyo?” Momo prods, voice gaining a serious edge. Jihyo feels a shiver down her spine. It reminds her that, behind Momo’s aloofness and silliness, this Momo exists. Just for her. “A relationship where people tell each other that they miss each other? Don’t be silly. Even friends do that.”

“Are we friends, Momo?” Jihyo can’t help but ask, speaking before she can even think, before she can catch up to the million thoughts running through her head. “Friends don’t do what we do.”

“You’re right.” Momo’s voice is full of laughter, one that pulls at the stubborn strings of Jihyo’s heart. “It’s what lovers do, Jihyo. Does that make us lovers instead?”

“You’re annoying.” Jihyo shakes her head, a light grin crossing her face, the tension in her shoulders melting away at Momo’s joking tone. For a moment, Momo helps her forget. She finds herself turning away, away from Mina, away from everything she’s known. Jihyo presses the phone a little closer to her ear.

“That’s not what you were saying in my bedroom last night.” Momo almost sing-songs on the other line, and it’s enough, enough to lighten the darkness in her chest, earning Momo a quiet laugh. She flushes at the memory, at the smug smile she can picture on Momo’s face, at the marks still etched into her skin by Momo’s burning lips.

“You’re going to get us caught, you know,” Jihyo scolds her, feeling like a giddy teenager for the first time in a long time. She closes her eyes to focus on the sound of Momo’s voice. The steady rhythm of her breaths.

“What is there to _catch_ , Miss Park?” Jihyo can almost hear the smirk in her voice, can almost picture the way Momo must be reclining into her bed, right then. Momo, even with everything going on, was easy. Momo made everything easy. “I thought we weren’t even friends.”

“Shut up!” Jihyo laughs, louder than she intends to, feeling Mina stir on the other side of the bed. A shard of panic stabs through Jihyo’s heart, and it seems Momo can feel it too, the way her own laughter trickles away - like water slipping through her fingers. “I have to go.” She pauses, feeling her heart catch in her throat. “I’ve missed you too, you know. See you soon.”

Jihyo manages to hang up before Mina stirs again, curling in against her back. She feels herself sink into the touch, sink into familiarity and knowing and _home_. She sets her phone back in its place. Mina presses a small kiss to her shoulder.

“Who was that?” Mina asks her, voice so thick with sleep that Jihyo wonders if she’s truly awake. Jihyo runs a hand over the arm wound around her waist, settling into Mina’s warmth, feeling a shaky breath tremble past her own lips.

“Just my sister.” Jihyo lies as easily as she draws her next breath, lies to Mina, again and again and again. “She said she can only call me at this time of night.”

Mina doesn’t question her, never finds reason to. Sometimes Jihyo wishes she would, wishes she wouldn’t trust her so readily, wishes she wouldn’t give her heart so readily. Mina only presses another kiss to her shoulder, head tucking against the nape of her neck. “Tell her that I miss her too.”

“I will,” Jihyo whispers, even though her voice feels louder than ever - even louder than the way her heart thundered in her chest right then. She laces her fingers through Mina’s, bare. For now. “Goodnight Mina. I love you.”

She feels Mina’s smile against her skin, the unguarded affection in her voice. Her stomach only twists tighter. “I love you too, Jihyo. Goodnight.”)

  
It’s been a decade since then.

And yet, the memory is stark in her mind, haunting the edges of the happiness she’d worked so hard to build. The sound of Momo’s voice rings in her head. Mina’s, too. They had been so young, then. So much younger than they are now, too young to even dream of where they’d ended up now. 

Her phone flashes incessantly on the bedside table as Momo sleeps beside her, face buried against their pillows, fingers curled loosely into the fabric of Jihyo’s shirt. Jihyo wishes it was all she had to worry about, the inevitable complains Momo would have in the morning for sleeping on her stomach again. She lets herself smile, just for a moment, leaning over to press a light kiss to Momo’s temple, to untangle her girlfriend from her shirt.

Momo could truly sleep through an earthquake if she wanted to.

“We can never really run away, can we?” Jihyo breathes into the dim light of their bedroom, tucking Momo’s hair behind her ear, the same way she had with Mina, so long ago. So, so long ago. “Not even now.”

  
(“Do you really think I’d let you leave, Jihyo?”

Of course it’s Sana.

A part of Jihyo is grateful, grateful that it hadn’t been anyone else. Hadn’t been Mina. A big part of her had been grateful that it hadn’t been Mina. Jihyo didn’t even want to think about it, how Mina might have looked at her then. What she might have said, what she might have done. What Jihyo might have done. The monotone voice blasts through the speakers again, and Jihyo’s attention is drawn back to the present, to the bundle in her arms, to everything that was waiting for her beyond those gates. 

“What makes you think you actually have a say in this, Sana?” Jihyo inches ever closer to the gates, soothing the child in her arms, making sure to hide her away from Sana’s piercing view. “If you really cared, just let me go, Sana. Let us go.”

“It she ever finds out about this, it would-.” Sana starts, eyes ablaze. Jihyo cuts her off, feeling her phone buzz in her pocket once more. Momo is waiting. 

“Well,” She bites out, hearing the beginnings of a cry on her daughter’s lips, her hands cradling her closer to her chest, her arms a protective shroud over her tiny figure. Jihyo wonders if she can feel it, the tension in Jihyo’s body, the way her heart rampaged in her chest, threatening to burst through her ribs. “She won’t find out, will she?”

Jihyo turns away then, turns away from everything she’s known, from the life she’s always lived. She turns, from Mina, and Sana, and the promises she knew she was breaking. Jihyo turns away, with her daughter in her arms and bleeding heart in her hands, and leaves behind her pasts to start anew.

Away from Sana, and her final pleading call.

Away from Mina, and the hollowness in her eyes.

Away from her family, and her fans, and the dreams she’d strived desperately to achieve. 

“Jihyo.” Momo’s voice is soft, riddled with concern, her hand warm as it cups around her elbow, guiding her onto the plane Jeongyeon has charted for them. It’s only when the door is shut behind them that Momo removes her mask, eyes searching her face, raking over Chaeyoung’s squirming figure. “Did anybody see you?”

“No,” Jihyo murmurs, sinking into Momo’s touch as she’s guided into a seat, Chaeyoung settling into the bassinet before them. Jeongyeon catches her gaze from across the aisle. Jihyo offers a stiff nod, ignoring the stone sinking to the pit of her stomach. She takes Momo’s hand, mustering up a smile and wishing with all her might that Momo will believe her. “Let’s go home.”)

The phone buzzes.

Jihyo’s had enough of it, enough of this old life chasing her, even now. She wonders how it’s caught up to her, when they’ve been so careful, burning bridges before they’ve even gotten to them.

Only Sana, of course. Only Sana would be able to find her, even after all this time.

Jihyo, with her aching bones and aching heart, rises from the warmth of Momo’s loose embrace, careful not to jostle her as she catches the final ring of Sana’s call. Jihyo wonders idly how she can have the time for this, how she can have the time for anything else when she has her hands full with… Jihyo shakes her head, hearing Sana’s frustrated huff on the other line as she slips off the bed, feet slipping into her slippers before she pads out of the room.

“Sana,” Jihyo greets simply as she reaches the door, casting one more glance at Momo, at the woman who has loved her, at the woman she loves, before she turns away, lowering her voice even further. “You really don’t give up, do you?”

“Of course not,” Sana’s voice is sharper than she’s ever heard, even sharper than it was at the airport when she’d made her escape, barely into her twenties and running, running, running. “I would never give up on Mina like that.”

  
(“I can’t live like this any longer, Mina.” Her own voice rings in her ears, the half-truths and half-lies she was feeding herself, feeding the woman sitting before her, as broken as she already was. Jihyo steels herself, and wills herself to break Mina a little more. “I can’t stay.”

“What do you mean?” Mina breathes out, her entire body speaking of disbelief, of incredulity. Of heartbreak. The mere sight of her etches itself into the deepest corners of Jihyo’s mind - the way her shoulders dropped, the way her eyes shimmered, the way her mouth curved around her words, seemingly as confused as she was, right then. “Jihyo?”

“I’m leaving you, Mina,” Jihyo tells her, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world, as if it isn’t tearing apart every fibre of her being. As if her own words aren’t clawing into her own heart. She thinks of Momo, of Chaeyoung, of the life waiting for her beyond this - sure and ready and certain.

“But the papers, they’re…” Mina’s reaction is immediate, the way she takes Jihyo’s hands into her own, the way she tries to catch her gaze, voice trembling as she pleads. “Just give me a little more time-.”

“I’ve been waiting all this time, Mina.” Jihyo swallows down the lump in her throat, tearing her hands away from Mina’s grasp, closing her eyes to the way Mina falls to her knees before her. She refuses to fall victim to the same eyes she’s gotten lost in, again and again and again. “I’m tired. Tired of waiting. Of this. Of us. Of you.”

She goes to leave, then, leaves despite the way Mina’s voice cracks, despite the way her own stomach turns, despite the way her entire body screams for her to stay, to take her words back, to keep waiting - just a little longer. Just a little longer.

“Jihyo, _please_.”

It’s the last thing she hears from her, for a long, long while.)

Jihyo’s jaw tightens, blinking away the tears that sting at her eyes over memories she thought she’d buried away years and years ago. Her fingers curl tighter around the phone in her hand, one hand pushing open the door to her office. “You know nothing, Sana.”

Sana’s laughter filters through the speakers, but the light that she’s always known is gone - empty. “I know enough.”

* * *

(“Is this enough for you?” Jeongyeon greets, in lieu of a hello, a how are you, a how have you been. A what do you need this time?

Mom’s voice is quiet, sincere. “I never wanted for this to happen, Jeongyeon.”

Jeongyeon laughs, her fingers wrinkling the newspapers strewn across her desk. “But it did.”)

Jeongyeon doesn’t answer Momo’s call.

Momo doesn’t call again.

She supposes it will never be enough for her.

* * *

(“Can you stand a little closer together?”

Dahyun complies easily with the photographer’s instructions, but even a person with the barest of their senses could feel the tension hanging over the room. The reluctance, radiating from all three of them. Her Mama, with her barely concealed discomfort. Mina, with her easy practiced smile and her solemn eyes. Herself, tired of the facade, of the image they were trying to keep for the sake of names, of pride.

“Would you like to join us for dinner?” Mina asks her once the shoot ends, and Dahyun wonders idly how it had all ended up like this. How every waking moment yearning for her mother turned into trying to escape from her, as soon as she could.

“No, Mina.” Dahyun hears the words tumbling from her own mouth as she shrugs into her jacket, ignoring the fiery gaze her aunt sends her. Ignoring the way her own mother’s heart crumbles before her. She casts a glance to her phone, ignoring the pointed sound of her aunt calling her name. “I have a new script to read up on. Sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Mina answers after a pause that threatens to swallow the entire room whole. Dahyun turns her head away when she steps closer, jaw setting at the light kiss pressed to her temple. “It’s good that you’re always so studious. I know you’re going to do well at your audition.”

Dahyun doesn’t offer much besides a low hum, terrified of the way her own chest tightens, of the lump building in her throat, the tears that were begging to bubble up. She walks away then, her silently seething aunt close behind her, her Mama standing in the doorway, expression unreadable.

“Dahyun,” Mina calls, just as she steps past the doorway, just as she feels her Mama’s arm around her shoulders. “I love you.”

Dahyun doesn’t answer.)

“Stupid,” Dahyun murmurs, swimming eyes hardly able to make out the way her mother’s face looked in the picture, her own voice choked with guilt, with longing. Her thumb traces over the jagged edges that mar her mother’s smiling face, wrinkled by the tape she’d used to make the photo whole again.

How young she had been then. How naive she had been then.

She thought she had all the time and space in the world for her anger, her hatred.

Dahyun turns in her bed, all too big now for just herself, and yet not big enough for all of the regrets she had in her heart, aching to spill over. She rubs at the tears in her eyes, berates herself for her own faults, and wonders if her mother, her Mom, would even be awake at such a late hour.

Wonders, and hopes, that there is enough time in the world for her Mom to forgive her.

* * *

She’s dreaming again.

It’s the same dream, again, the same dream that’s been plaguing Chaeyoung for weeks. The same dream that Chaeyoung wakes from, chest tight and heart racing and breath skipping, half expecting to be floating about in the endless blue of the sea, with no other company but herself and the screams no one would ever hear.

It’s silly, Chaeyoung thinks as she curls her fingers into the fabric of her shirt, drawing shaky breaths to calm her racing heart. She’s too old to be afraid of things like this, right?

Her Mom had been around to soothe her earlier, in the car, holding her hand without question. With her easy smile and tender gaze and steady grip, the rough calluses of her weathered hands a simple reminder that she was still there.

Chaeyoung catches sight of her own hands, damp with sweat and still stained with the specks of blue she couldn’t scrub away, no matter how hard she tried. She clenches her own hands closed, letting out a shuddering breath and letting the warmth of her night light wash over her. 

She couldn’t wake her now, not so late, not when her own Mom had already stayed up with her for weeks and weeks on end, just to finish her winning piece. Not when her Mom had carried her up to bed, even though Chaeyoung was sure she was hardly as light as she used to be when her Mom carried her, all those years ago.

Her favorite strawberry milk would have to do, then.

Chaeyoung’s journey down the hallways of the apartment is quick, soundless, with Chaeyoung knowing every creak and ache in the wood so well she knows how to avoid them by now. Her Mom had been the one to teach her, after all. It was on her journey back that she skids to a stop, hearing the sound of her Mum’s voice, just barely audible through the crack in the doorway to her office. 

“How long has she known?”

Chaeyoung, sipping through the straw of the carton in her hand, knows better than to eavesdrop. Until she hears her name, that is. She presses herself against the wall beside the open doorway, trying to listen as closely as possible as she holds her breath. She wonders if it’s worth it, with the way her heart pounds in her chest. With the way her head spins.

“If she knew about Chaeyoung from the very beginning, why didn’t she do anything? Say anything?” Her Mum’s voice is low, just barely audible for Chaeyoung to hear through the sliver in the doorway. Her eyebrows furrow at the question. Why would her Mum sound so perturbed by someone knowing her when she was younger?

It’s the first time, really, that her Mum sounds afraid about someone finding out about her.

“So that’s her name.” A voice crackles through the speakers of her Mum’s phone and, in a heart stopping breath, Chaeyoung catches a glimpse of her Mum, on a video call with a woman she’s never seen, with a voice she’s never heard. Or at least, she thinks so. “She doesn’t even know if you’re alive, Jihyo.”

Chaeyoung feels her breath catch in her throat at those words, feels as if her knees might give out at any minute, feels as if she might empty out her stomach, right then and there. Just who on earth was this person? Of course her Mum was alive. Why would there be any reason to believe that she wasn’t? The milk in her hands feels frozen, then, settling heavily in her stomach as her Mum speaks again, voice coated in frustration.

“If that’s the case then _why_ , Sana?” The sound of the woman’s name is familiar, but Chaeyoung can hardly place it, not in the storm brewing in her mind. She presses impossibly closer, fingers digging into the painted wood of the doorframe. “Why am I on that damn will if she doesn’t even know I’m alive?”

“The facility informed her, Jihyo.” This woman, this Sana, speaks plainly, but her voice sends trembles shivering down her spine, threatening to destroy the very foundations of everything Chaeyoung has ever known. She hears the curse that falls from her Mum’s lips, hears the way her old computer chair creaks as she turns. Chaeyoung’ a fear skyrockets once more, missing part of Santa’s words as she presses herself back against the wall. “...Used in a procedure. Those are her kids, too, Jihyo. All she knows is that there must have been one that’s survived.”

“Listen, Sana, you have the wrong idea about all of this.” Her Mum is almost laughing, but there is no humor. Only exhaustion, only the icy anger she’d seen once in her life. She hears Sana’s scoff, and it only seems to fuel her Mum’s frustrations, her rising voice seeping clearly through the open doorway. “Mina has no right to call Chaeyoung her daughter.”

Chaeyoung wonders if this was what Dahyun had meant before, about feeling the entire world as she knew it shatter beneath her feet. Mina? Who on Earth was Mina? Who on Earth was Sana? Why on Earth was she looking for her Mum, for her - and why on Earth was she calling her Mina’s daughter for crying out loud. It couldn’t be, right? It absolutely couldn’t be, right?

Chaeyoung can barely stand, can barely even listen to the next words that drift through the door, feeling as if the world might swallow her whole at any minute - and she would be glad for it. It’s the sound of Sana’a voice that brings her back, so venomous that even Chaeyoung flinches at its bite. “I never should have let you get on that plane.”

“That wasn’t your choice to make, Sana,” Her Mum shoots back with barely contained anger, and Chaeyoung’s head only swims further, her breaths growing shallow. Her Mum had run away. Her Mum had run away - from this… this _Mina_. Her mother? Her real mother?

“It wasn’t yours to cut Mina out of Chaeyoung’s life.” Sana speaks with finality, as if she hadn’t just turned Chaeyoung’s entire life upside down. Had her entire life been a lie? If this Mina, this new mysterious woman from her Mum’s past, was her biological mother… then who was Momo, the Mom she’d known her entire life? Chaeyoung can barely think, barely hear the last few words floating out to reach her. Santa’s voice is softer now, almost pleading. “This isn’t the time to argue about decisions we can’t change anymore. They want to meet her, Jihyo. You can’t hide her forever.”

“I was doing a fine job until you called.” Her Mum’s voice sounds as defeated as Chaeyoung feels, her high from earlier melting away into the sudden storm in her mind. She hears the rattle of her Mum’s nails against her desk, a nervous habit even Chaeyoung has picked up over the years. Chaeyoung looks down at the carton in her hand, warm now. Forgotten. “If I refuse?”

“This isn’t just about you this time, Jihyo.” Sana’s frustration seeps back into her voice. Chaeyoung risks another glance. “You’ve already kept her away for _fifteen_ years, Jihyo. The Myouis are only trying to fulfill their only daughter’s wishes. If not for you, do it for Chaeyoung. They both deserve to know.”

The line seems to cut, then. There is naught but silence, but the click of her Mum’s phone against her desk, the trembling sigh that passes through her lips.

Chaeyoung has heard enough.

She slinks back to her room as quietly as she can, heart racing a mile a minute as she huddles back under the covers, her half-empty carton taunting her from the bedside table. _Mina_ , she repeats in her head as she collapses back against the pillows. Her mother’s name. _Myoui Mina_.

* * *

Jihyo wonders how her life had come to this.

Wonders how, in pursuit of happiness and peace and freedom, she ends up tangled in a web tighter than any spider could ever spin. She feels her knees tremble in the aftermath of her call with Sana, at the fierce look in her eye, at the documents she’d presented - all confidential, redacted. She wonders how Sana had gotten a hold of them in the first place, but she knows better than to question Sana by now. 

Jihyo knows better than to question the niggling doubt in the back of her mind as she stops before Chaeyoung’s bedroom door, unlocked and slightly ajar. She sucks in a soft breath as she peeks inside, catches the sight of her daughter - her daughter - and wishes she could keep her away from this for just a little longer. She slips inside, matching her steps to Chaeyoung’s deep breaths, careful as she sits by her bedside, just like those used to, when Chaeyoung barely reached her hip.

It seems so far away now, as Jihyo combs through Chaeyoung’s light brown hair, as Jihyo traces over the soft skin of her cheek, the light line of her jaw. She leans down to press a trembling kiss to her temple, wills herself to not let her tears spill over. Jihyo wishes, achingly, desperately, for just one more moment. Just one more moment. Just like this.

* * *

(“Rise and shine.”

Dahyun stirs at the sound of her Mom’s voice, soft and lilting in song, feeling slender fingers comb through her hair, hearing the smile in her voice. She feels the tender kiss to her forehead as her eyelids flutter open, a brilliant smile spreading across her face.

“Mom!” She exclaims, throwing her arms around her mother’s neck to keep her close, hearing her mother’s tinkling laughter against her ear. Dahyun burrows in a little closer, wondering if she was really awake, wondering if it was really her Mom right there, holding her in her arms. “Is it really you?”

“It’s me, sunshine,” Her Mom reassures, voice firm, whole, her arms wrapping warmly around her. “I won’t be leaving any time soon.”)

“Rise and shine!” Dahyun hears again, truly jolting out of her sleep, her head sore and her mouth dry. She groans at the familiar weight settled on her hips, the hands pinching her cheeks, her own hand blindly swatting at her intruder. “Finally, I’ve been trying to wake you for 30 minutes now.”

“Who let you in?” Dahyun complains, unable to help her smile as her best friend only settles further against her, warm and smelling sweetly of her shampoo. “Gahyeon, get off.”

“My mother in law did, of course,” Gahyeon drawls happily against her ear before she sits back up, pulling at the strings of the sweatshirt Dahyun is still wearing. Dahyun can’t find the energy to fight her off, not at the easy smirk on her face, at the one slice of normalcy she still has in this whirlwind of events she tries to call her life. “We’re going to be late if you don’t get up soon.”

“Don’t call my mom that,” Dahyun grumbles as she finally nudges Gahyeon off, grinning at her exaggerated fall and crying in response, swatting at her leg. “I’ll be down in five minutes.”

“That’s all I’m giving you, or I’ll replace you as my on-screen partner,” Gahyeon warns as she rolls off the bed, managing to look even better having rolled around in her sheets than she had, pristine and made up.

“I promise,” Dahyun throws over her shoulder as she shuts the bathroom door behind her, the click of the lock setting her body into autopilot, settling into her usual routine. It’s strange, how the silence seems demanding rather than comforting, how it seems to follow her around more than her own shadow, hiding so much in the absence of sound. Of everything.

Dahyun thinks she should be used to it.

She isn’t.

The car ride to their shoot is quiet, too.

Not even her aunt speaks a word to her, doesn’t offer more than a soft smile and a bag from her mother’s own bakery - a chocolate muffin that feels like ash in her mouth. Even her favorite things felt bleak, then, and Dahyun is left to bask in the odd brightness of the girl she’s known her whole life. Left to enjoy the splash of color Gahyeon offers her, even now. Especially now.

They’re like puzzle pieces, Dahyun thinks, as she hums and curls her pinkie around Gahyeon’s, nodding along to her story of a tall girl she’d seen the other day, carrying three - no, five - boxes. Dahyun is happy to pretend that the way they slot together is enough to soothe her aching, weeping heart. 

Dahyun thinks she should be used to that, too.

She never is.

* * *

(There hadn’t been much time, then, much time to talk, much time to say anything, the first time Momo calls her again, after everything that had happened.

Momo sits down across from her, trembling hands curled around a cup of coffee that tastes like it had been scraped from the bottom of a barrel. Jeongyeon supposes Momo doesn’t have much time to think about that. Doesn’t have much time to think about anything other than her daughter, small and fragile but alive, for now.

 _I didn’t know who else to ask_ , Momo’s voice had been pleading, desperate, shooting a spike of fear down Jeongyeon’s spine. _Jihyo and I…_

Jihyo, of course. The very woman who had broken her wife’s heart, the very woman who had tested the very limits of their marriage. Alive, and well, and a mother. The mother of Momo's daughter. Jeongyeon would have laughed if her own heart didn’t feel like seizing up in her chest.

“Is it the same as Mina’s?” Jeongyeon’s coffee remains untouched before her, the first sip she took settling heavily in her stomach. She remembers the sleepy look Mina had given her earlier, the lies she had sprouted, the way Dahyun’s hand slipped from her own. She could feel them blossoming, the flowers of her guilt, its roots deep in her heart, its stalks curling around her ribs.

“Not as severe.” Momo sounds nothing like the girl who had tried to push her out of Mina’s treehouse all those years ago, declaring her as some sort of intruder. Nothing like the woman who has protected her wife, her family, fiercely, thanklessly. “But the procedure, Jihyo and I…”

“I’ve already taken care of it,” Jeongyeon murmurs, settling against the stiff plastic of the cafeteria seats, careful not to lower her mask. It would be dangerous for people to recognize her, even in the secluded hospital Momo has dragged her out to, in the middle of the night. To expose everything that they have carefully crafted for over a year, now. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know.” Momo finally lifts her head to meet her gaze, and Jeongyeon sees the same look in her eyes, the same look she’d given Mina, asking her to stay. “All I know is that you saved my daughter’s life. And I can never repay you for it.”)

“It’s almost like you want to get caught.”

Momo sits across from her, a week after Jeongyeon had last rejected her call, bright-faced and sporting shorter hair, framing the sharper corners of her features. She seems to be happier these days, seeming to be free from everything that was happening. Jeongyeon wishes she could escape into the unabashed delight on Momo’s face, the way she leans towards her, sliding a small plaque across the table.

“This is Chaeyoung’s,” Momo tells her with an easy grin. Jeongyeon recognises it, the same pride in her voice, the same pride she has for Dahyun when she performs on stage. When she starred in her first show, her first movie, her first play, musical, music video. Jeongyeon supposes she has her own sets of firsts, too, with a child she’s hardly ever met. A child she’s kept alive for over a decade, now.

“First place,” Jeongyeon reads with an impressed lift of her brows, tracing over the printed characters before her, slowly and reverently. A name that wasn’t Momo’s. Not even Jihyo’s. “Son Chaeyoung.”

“I wanted her to carry my name,” Momo hums softly, tells her like she has a million times before. There is a quiet longing in her voice, even after fifteen years. Especially after fifteen years. The shadows of her darkened bakery seem to creep further over Momo’s skin. “It would have been too obvious.”

They sit for a moment, regarding each other like they always do, left to wonder how they’d gotten here. Left to wonder how far they’d fallen. They’d been on the top of the world, then. They had ruled the world, then. They sit for a moment, regarding each other and their crumbling kingdoms, with their broken daughters left to pick up the pieces. 

“Why did you call me here, Momo?” Jeongyeon asks her, the words resting too heavily on her tongue, begging to leave her. A glance at her watch tells her that she’s already late, late to take her shift with Mina. Momo stays quiet for another moment, sliding the plaque back towards her, repeating the motion Jeongyeon had done only moments ago. Her touch is longing, thoughtful.

“I want to tell her,” Momo finally answers, with words that jolt down her spine, curling dangerously around her lungs and stealing her breath away. “I want to tell Mina about Chaeyoung.”

“Does Jihyo know?” Jeongyeon asks after her own beat, her mind whirring a mile a minute. Her emotions cycle through disbelief, through anger, hardly able to believe that Momo of all people would even consider putting this sort of strain on Mina, especially when she was in this condition. “Have you finally lost your mind?”

“I haven’t discussed it with her yet,” Momo replies pointedly, glaring at the implication of Jeongyeon’s words. Jeongyeon only huffs out a breath, sitting back against the plush leather of the cafe seat behind her. “It’s been long enough, Jeongyeon. How much more does she have to miss of Chaeyoung’s life?”

“You should have considered that before playing dead to make house with the woman she loved, Hirai Momo,” Jeongyeon spits out, her voice echoing in the emptiness of her closed store. She clenches her fists, leveling Momo with an incredulous stare. “How can you actually think about doing this right now? Don’t you think Mina has enough on her plate?”

“What could she possibly have on her plate?” Momo scoffs, running a hand through her hair and daring to look right into Jeongyeon’s eyes, as if she didn’t know. Jeongyeon stares back at the woman that Mina has loved and lost, in a fire that ran deeper and darker than losing even her. Even Jihyo. “...Jeongyeon?”

“You don’t know,” Jeongyeon breathes out, the tension, the anger and frustration draining out of her shoulders. She slumps back against the chair as Momo’s expression grows clueless, fingers tight around the plaque in her hands.

“What don’t I know, Jeongyeon?” Momo presses, sounding even more confused than she looked, her own anger melting away at the way Jeongyeon looks at her then, her hands trembling, eyes solemn.

“Momo,” Jeongyeon starts softly. There is no animosity, then. No pain, no more secrets, nothing more than the deep friendship that has kept her holding onto this secret for so, so long. “Momo… Mina, she’s…”

* * *

(“Do you think they’ll like me?”

Chaeyoung’s voice is small, smaller than Jihyo has ever heard, enough to draw her attention away from the gaggle of children walking into the school before them. She gazes into the wide, wide eyes of her beautiful daughter, speaking volumes in her simple, unwavering stare.

Jihyo offers a gentle smile, crouching down to her height and ignoring the protest her knees make, even after so long. She tucks Chaeyoung’s hair behind her ears, still a little choppy from the impromptu cut she’d given herself, humming as Chaeyoung quiets, hands curled tightly around the straps of her brand-new backpack.

A gift. Jeongyeon’s voice rings in her head, the simple paper bag acting as a shield between them, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. An offering. She and Dahyun can match. 

Jihyo shakes out of her thoughts, focusing on soothing her daughter, on urging a smile back onto her face. “I’m sure they’ll love you, Chaeyoung. What’s not to like?”

“They might make fun of me,” Chaeyoung mumbles, kicking at the loose stones on the path they were on, shrinking under the encouraging looks of the teachers by the doorway. Jihyo watches as she lets go of her bag with one hand, tugging lightly at the thin necklace hanging over her chest, instead. “I don’t have all of my teeth.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re not the only one,” Jihyo breathes out a soft sigh of relief, pulling Chaeyoung’s crisp t-shirt over the beginnings of the scar on her chest. “You kids eat too many sweets these days, after all.”

“Do not!” Chaeyoung exclaims, breaking away from her touch with an indignant huff, cheeks bursting out in the same way Jihyo’s heart just might, right out of her chest.

“Okay, okay.” Jihyo can only laugh, drawing her daughter back in for one more hug, for a dozen more kisses, aching to keep her daughter to herself for another moment longer. She breathes her in, wondering if she’ll feel the same longing for the rest of Chaeyoung’s life, with every step she took forward and slowly away from her. “I love you, Chaeyoung.”

Chaeyoung only hums, wriggling out of her grasp after planting a noisy kiss against her cheek, all of her worries already forgotten. She beams, Jihyo mirroring her smile as Chaeyoung waves over her shoulder. “Love you too!”)

“Mum,” Jihyo finally hears, Chaeyoung’s voice cutting through her thoughts and the heaviness in her mind, still lingering on the call - a week ago, now. “I’m going to be late.”

“Sorry,” Jihyo laughs out, more of a breath than anything, snapping back into the reality of the fact that her daughter was a high school student now. She steps back to take her in again, smiling fondly at the way Chaeyoung squirms, pouting under her scrutiny. She hears the beginnings of a familiar whine, and Jihyo can only laugh again, full and warm, taking Chaeyoung’s hands into her own. “Okay, okay. I just can’t believe it. I feel like I was dropping you off at play school just yesterday.”

“You’re just too sentimental,” Chaeyoung grumbles, but Jihyo knows her daughter, knows her better than she even knows herself; knows the tiny smile she’s hiding in the collar of her brand new uniform jacket - a deep, dark navy that contrasts with the light of her hair. “I should go.”

“Give me another minute.” Jihyo shakes her head, stepping closer to cup her daughter’s cheeks, to indulge in this moment of quiet with her. She’s surprised when Chaeyoung is the one that presses into an embrace, arms tight around her waist, head burrowing against her neck. Jihyo doesn’t hesitate to wrap her up in her own arms, enveloping her in a tender embrace, fingers carding through soft hair. “Chaeyoung?”

“I love you Mum,” Chaeyoung whispers suddenly, voice as heavy as the secrets that lie in Jihyo’s heart. She presses closer, hiding in the comfort of Jihyo’s arms, and Jihyo is happy to provide it, keeping Chaeyoung away from a world that only took and took and took.

Jihyo holds her closer, and tells whatever higher power that has damned her to this life that it could take anything, anyone - but not this. Never this.

* * *

  
(‘Dear Dahyun,

Isn’t it nice to write letters like this? Doesn’t it feel like the older times, when they didn’t have computers and stuff? Mrs Kang told us that we had to write letters to the person we picked from her pretty hat, and that you guys were from a really high grade in a school all the way across the country! That's a long way, right? Even the walk down to the grocery store with my Mom feels like a really long way sometimes.

Anyway, Mrs Kang told us to put these things about ourselves. My name is Chaeyoung, I’m four years old and I have two mommies. I like to draw and I like to run, and I love strawberries the most. What kind of things do you like? Talk to you again soon!

From, Chaeyoung.

  
PS. Mrs Kang told me I could draw a picture with my letter, so I did. That’s my Mom, Mum and me!)

  
“Dearest Dahyun,” Chaeyoung murmurs aloud as she finds a quiet corner in her brand new school, taking a minute to gather her nerves before her brand new classes start, with a brand new set of people she’d never met before. The phone in her hand feels like a lifeline, and the text she sends feels like a cry for help - a message in a bottle. There’s a voice in the back of her head, yelling at her, but Chaeyoung can hardly pay attention to it, huddling closer to herself. “What do you do when your whole world turns upside down? Yours truly, your taller friend Chaeyoung.”

* * *

  
“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

(“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Dahyun hears through the ringing in her ears and the buzz of her phone, slipping right off the bed and back into her discarded jeans. The touch pressing into the small of her back burns, and yet Dahyun hardly remembers the name of the girl behind her, asking her not to leave.)

“First day today.” Dahyun flashes an apologetic grin, untangling herself from Gahyeon for the last time that day. She squeezes the hands Gahyeon slip into her own, tugging her up from the pathway where they’d been instructed to bump into each other, over and over again, the early hours of the day melting into the late afternoon. “I have a promise to keep, Kim Gahyeon.”

“You owe me lunch, Myoui-Yoo Dahyun,” Gahyeon complains, but shoos her off, already being whisked away to her own solo shots for the day. Dahyun sends a flying kiss her way, laughing at the fake gag Gahyeon offers her in return. Not even the sound of her full name can deter her, not with what was awaiting her. 

It felt strange, having something to look forward to in a time like this, wishing that time would go faster when her entire body had been aching for it to slow down for just another minute.

This was the only exception.

She was the only exception.

* * *

  
“Let’s all get along for the year, okay?”

Jihyo smiles fondly at the level of cheers she receives from her new students, young and bright and lovely - bar one, sitting prim and proper and silent in the back, gazing out the window. She doesn’t pay much mind to it, not yet, not until she’s dismissed every student by name, everyone but this young girl, who hadn’t spoken for anything other than introducing herself.

She makes her way over to her, helping her pack away the last of her new books in a bag that she’s seen one too many times today - one she knows costs more than her previous paycheck in her previous chocolates. The same one Jeongyeon had given Chaeyoung, all those years ago.

“Thank you, Miss Park,” Tzuyu offers, seemingly surprised by her help. Jihyo only smiles gently as she packs the last of her books away, snapping it shut for the girl before her, younger than even Chaeyoung.

“How’s your arm?” Jihyo asks carefully, her gentle smile turning into a concerned one as her eyes sweep over Tzuyu’s face. She’s beautiful, to say the least, with a quiet air about her that reminds her too much of… Jihyo shakes her head, having been pulled aside by the principal herself, to take care in what she said and did with her mysterious new student.

Tzuyu stays silent, but her gaze is thankful as Jihyo helps her shrug her backpack on. Her eyes are wide and full of warmth, one hand straying absently to the shoulder of her casted arm. “I’m fine, Miss Park. It doesn’t hurt as much anymore.”

“That’s good.” Jihyo hums, finally keeping her hand to herself, trying not to let her own motherly instincts take over when it came to Tzuyu. She looks incredibly small, then, even at only 8 years old and already almost taller than Jihyo. “Will someone be collecting you?”

“Yes.” Tzuyu’s answers are simple, quick, never offering more than she has to. Jihyo supposes she understands what secrets these children must hide in a school like this - secrets for only those who could afford to keep it. “My driver will be collecting me.”

“Good.” Jihyo smiles warmly, feeling pride blossom in her chest at the first smile she manages to wrangle out of Tzuyu that entire day. She nods towards the door, pleased that Tzuyu was warming up to her, little by little. “I’ll walk you out. I wouldn’t want anyone to bump into you with your arm like that.”

“Thank you,” Tzuyu murmurs again, keeping close as they walk through the barely there chaos of the hallways, the last handful of the older kids laughing as they raced out of the building. Jihyo can’t help but keep an eye on Tzuyu, at the simple cast wrapped around her wrist, decorated with bunnies and dogs and odd shapes Jihyo couldn’t identify. Jihyo can only wonder what potential there is to discover in the young girl before her, wonders about the way her eyes light up as they reach the entrance. Wonders about the sudden uneasiness that settles in her stomach.

“Dahyun unnie!” Tzuyu calls, eyes bright and smile brighter, dimple deep, a far cry from the silent girl sitting in her class earlier. Jihyo barely registers it, the thanks Tzuyu gives to her, not at the sight of the girl standing by the gates. Jihyo barely has time to press herself into the wall beside the heavy doors of the building, escaping Dahyun’s distracted gaze, and the gaze of the woman standing just beyond her - the same gaze she’d seen, just a week ago.

Jihyo breathes, and hides, and wonders at how small this world truly is.


	5. on begged and borrowed time

“You’re new.”

(“You’re new,” Chaeyoung hears, lifting her head at the all too familiar words. She wonders if she’d ever get used to it, moving from school to school, moving from place to place. She was always meeting all of these new people, always the odd one out amongst them.

“I am,” Chaeyoung confirms with a toothy grin, setting down her crayons to give her new classmate her undivided attention. “I’m Chaeyoung!”

“I’m Donghan.” The boy standing by her table matches her grin, adjusting the ball tucked in his arm. A gaggle of kids wait by the door, watching with expectant smiles. “Wanna come play with us?”

Chaeyoung, stuffing her half-finished letter into her backpack, nods happily, rising to her feet. “Sure!”)

Chaeyoung lifts her head at those familiar words, shielding her sketchbook a little further away under this intruder’s unabashed inspection. She supposes she’ll never be used to it, to the sound of those words, to entering new worlds that people have already made homes of. There is a light chatter that rises in the room. Chaeyoung feels their lingering gazes on the back of her head.

“I am,” She confirms, for maybe the hundredth time in her life. She fiddles with her pencil, worrying at its worn eraser. “First year. Just like you.”

The pretty girl, perched on the edge of her desk, smiles down at her - one that glints in the light. One that makes her stomach turn and her heart shake, all at the same time. Chaeyoung feels a little bashful, uneasy under this stranger’s gaze. “You’re not from here, are you?”

(“You’re not from here, are you?”

Chaeyoung shoulders past the small crowd they’ve formed around her, shoulders past their quiet snickers and their not so hushed remarks. Her fingers curl just a little tighter around the straps of her backpack, ignoring the sticky sensation of the juice they’d tipped into the front of her shirt, wishing them all away.)

In that instant, Chaeyoung grows wary of this new classmate of hers, grows wary of what might follow. She casts a nervous gaze around the room, for anyone who might be waiting for a sign to mess with her again. Regardless of how hard they work, Chaeyoung knows that this school is far beyond what her parents can afford. She knows that her education, her uniform on her back, the textbooks in her desks - even the bag she carries around, they’re all gifts, given graciously by her godmother. A godmother she hasn’t even met.

Still, Chaeyoung musters up her courage and lifts her chin, gaze unwavering.

“No, I’m not,” Chaeyoung replies evenly, squashing the tremble in her voice and closing her sketchbook, closing her life away from those curious, prying eyes. She pries out the few truths she’s gotten from her mother. “I’m here on a scholarship.”

“That’s nice.” The girl hums, seeming to soften at the expression Chaeyoung has on her face. Chaeyoung watches cautiously when the girl lifts her hands in a surrendering motion, offering what Chaeyoung assumes is a friendly smile. She feels her own shoulders sink a little, eyeing the hand her classmate offers when she relaxes. “I’m Yeri. Bae Yeri. Do you want to go out for ice cream with me later?”

A part of Chaeyoung worries. A part of her is scared - terrified even, that Yeri will be just like the people who used to push her around at her old school. But a bigger part of her remembers her Mum’s words, the comfort of her touch, and Chaeyoung musters up a smile, taking Yeri’s hand into her own. The bright smile on Yeri’s face helps, too.

“I’m Chaeyoung. Son Chaeyoung.” Yeri’s hand squeezes happily around her own. “I’d love to.”

* * *

It’s easy to slip away, especially when Dahyun and Tzuyu are so caught up in each other.

Sana only catches the tail end of Tzuyu’s excited babble, telling Dahyun about the pretty teacher who helped her with her bag earlier. Sana’s lip curls at the mere mention of her, feeling a swell of anger that Tzuyu was in such close proximity to Jihyo. She wonders how small the world must be for their paths to cross like this, over and over again.

“Miss Park,” Sana calls as she reaches the door, catches Jihyo as she begins to flee, heels clicking against weathered wooden floors, echoing down the hallway. How could she have known? She couldn’t possibly have known. “Or is it Mrs. Son, now?”

Sana can’t take delight in it, the way Jihyo flinches at her voice, the way she hesitates, as if it aches her to even face her. She had loved Jihyo once, too. As a friend, as a sister. She had wished everything for her once, too. Perhaps it was naïve of her, especially when she knew the life Mina had laid out for her. Young and foolish.

“Sana,” Jihyo greets evenly, schooling her features in a way she’d seen a million times before. At shoots with Mina. At dinners with Jeongyeon. At the airport, just before-. “I wish I could say it’s nice to see you.”

“What are you doing here, Jihyo?” Sana asks, knowing they don’t have much time, knowing Dahyun will wonder where she’s gone soon enough. Jihyo had been a ghost, flitting from one place to another - a ghost, hiding behind the name and riches of the person she never expected to be connected to this. “Why _here_ , Park Jihyo?”

“Believe me, this is the last place I want to be right now.” Jihyo’s voice is sharp, cutting, attempting to sever what little there is left between them. Her features begin to soften only moments later, lips curling up into a trembling smile. Sana feels a familiar figure tuck against her side, Sana’s hand immediately coming up to curl over Tzuyu’s head. “Tzuyu.”

“Ahma,” Tzuyu calls up to her gently. Sana’s jaw tenses at the flicker in Jihyo’s eyes, her hand soothing gently over Tzuyu’s dark hair. Of course Dahyun would send Tzuyu to fetch her. “Is everything okay? Dahyun unnie is ready to go.”

“I was just having a talk with Mrs. Son here.” Sana draws a smile onto her own face as she meets Tzuyu’s gaze, her anger melting away at the sight of Tzuyu’s wide, curious gaze. If there was anyone she was desperate to keep out of this mess, it was Tzuyu. She presses a small kiss to the top of Tzuyu’s head. “She was telling me that you were very respectful in class. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Son?”

“Yes,” Jihyo schools her features effortlessly, as brilliant of an actress now as she was years ago. She smiles kindly at Tzuyu, and Sana only holds her closer, almost shielding her away from Jihyo’s piercing view. “I was just telling your mom how wonderful you were in class today.”

Tzuyu only gives a bashful smile, ducking her head against Sana’s side. Her hand slips easily into Sana’s, murmuring her thanks as she begins to tug Sana away. Sana doesn’t blink at Jihyo’s words, mustering up the last of her patience for the woman before her. “I hope to only hear good things, Mrs. Son. If you’ll excuse us, we must be leaving.”

“Of course.” Jihyo’s own words grow thin, gaze piercing. Sana is sure she’s wondering the same thing. When will all of this be over? Will it _ever_ be? “See you tomorrow, Tzuyu.”

“See you, Mrs. Son,” Tzuyu offers with a shy smile and pinks cheeks, finally succeeding in leading Sana away. Sana lets her gaze linger on Jihyo for as long as she can, only turning away when they reach the car, a curious Dahyun helping her sister up into the car.

“What was that all about?” Dahyun asks her as she buckles Tzuyu in, and Sana distracts herself for a moment, happy to see Dahyun dote so dearly over her baby sister. 

“Nothing.” Sana presses the lie through her teeth, hoping her reassurances sound genuine enough to make it past Dahyun’s keen senses. Dahyun’s silence is telling, especially as her hand stills over Tzuyu’s seatbelt. “I was just making sure that Tzuyu is settling well. Nothing to worry about.”

Dahyun hums, seeming to accept her words for now and settling back into her own seat, buckling herself in. Sana sits back against the passenger seat, nodding towards their driver, and wishing Tzuyu’s schooling was the worst of her worries. 

Sana’s phone buzzes, her breath catching in her throat as Jihyo’s number flashes across the screen. 

_‘I guess you finally got what you wanted_.’

Sana’s fingers tighten around her phone, gazing past her words and drinking the sight of their sun-kissed smiling faces. If only it was true. If only it was that easy.

* * *

“Miss Yoo, please give us a few words!”

(“Please, give us a few words.”

The media is relentless, for days, for what seems like weeks, lingering on the edges of this new reality she must live in. In the new reality she’s made for herself.

They seem to be in a state of shock; that the perfect bubble that their family remained in popped right before their eyes. Mina doesn’t seem to understand, either, but she works graciously, effortlessly, attending shoots and events with her sad, solemn eyes. Jeongyeon is the one left to handle what is left behind, left to face what remains of her actions, of her own life slipping like sand through her fingers.

“Jeongyeon.” She hears Seungyeon’s voice, then, drawing her out of her thoughts, of Mina’s own brief interview, and the indefinite hiatus she would be taking once her ongoing projects come to an end. What more does she have to say? What more does she have to give to these vultures, picking at their lives when there is nothing left. 

How quickly everything left.

“Mina and I ended on amicable terms,” Jeongyeon starts, echoing the words Mina had spoken earlier that morning. Her name sounds foreign on her tongue, almost sacred, even in the heat of her own hurt, her own anger. “But, a separation is difficult, regardless of the situation. We hope you will respect our family’s wishes to speak no further on this issue.”)

It will always haunt her, it seems, the life she’s tried to leave behind. The life she’s tried to sever herself from in leaving.

“Mina is doing well.” Jeongyeon’s words are recycled, well practiced and rehearsed, drilled into her mind by the legal teams who insisted that she be the front for this. The front for something she had abandoned, years ago. “We hope that you will continue to respect our privacy during this time.”

“Ms. Yoo!” Another reporter calls as her driver opens the door to the car. Jeongyeon hesitates, fingers lingering on the frame of the van. “What does this mean for you two? Have you two rekindled your romance?”

The volume rises then. Jeongyeon feels lost, lost in the noise and her thoughts and the cruel wishes whispering at the back of her mind. She climbs into the van, the ring shimmering around her finger feeling the heaviest it’s been in so, so long.

“Mina and I are close friends, nothing more,” She offers with an easy smile, ignoring the old aches in her heart wishing that anything, that _everything_ was different. How could anything be different, now? “Nothing will change.”

* * *

(“Sana, where are we going?”

Momo can’t help but whine a little as Sana pulls her along, pulls her away from the overflowing table of food and down long, quiet hallways. The low hum of the party only grows farther and farther away, and yet Sana doesn’t stop, not until they reach a simple sliding door at the end of the hallway, decorated with simple, blooming flowers. 

“I want you to meet somebody,” Sana whispers, eyes bright and smile eager. Momo can’t help but indulge her, especially when she looks at her like that. Sana moves with care, with familiarity. Momo can’t help but wonder what’s so special about this somebody, hidden away by her painted flowers and low, warm light. The door slides open, bathing Momo in a sterile scent masked by light lavender. “Momo, this is Mina.”

Momo will always remember it, the first time she sees Mina. Before their formal introductions, before her father had sat her down, had told her that this girl was the girl he would have to protect with his life. Momo will always remember the way Mina looks, then, gazing out upon the ocean waves. The way Sana’s hand tightens around her own, the way Mina’s head turns - the curious look in her eyes, the tilt of her head.

“Who’s this?” Momo hears, the words drifting faintly past the fishbowl that seems to be wrapped around her head. She hardly has the mind to squirm away from the wipes Sana scrubs against her face, her hands, only floating father away when Sana leaves her side, helping this Mina up from her seat by the window.

“This is Momo.” The clock ticks, her breath hitching when Mina’s hand slips into her own. “She can be your friend, too! Right, Momo?”)

“Right,” Momo murmurs to herself as she runs a thumb over the glossy picture, the first they’d taken together. It’s crooked and blurry and crowded with their smiling faces, having been laughing too hard to really hold onto Mina’s brand new camera. They had been so much younger then, younger than even Chaeyoung was now. But older than Dahyun had been when she’d left.

(“I don’t see why you have to fly ahead so early just to check on the shooting locations.”

Mina’s voice is soft, coated in playful petulance, eyes full of warmth as Momo bounces a giggling Dahyun in her arms. Dahyun’s little fingers curl tightly around the strings of Momo’s hoody, and Momo wishes she didn’t have to leave. Wishes that could look into Mina’s bright eyes and spill the truth resting on the tip of her tongue. Wishes that what could be her last words to Mina, to Dahyun, weren’t lies. Wishes that she could leave them with more than just a breezy, fading goodbye.

Momo wonders, as Dahyun burrows her face against the fabric of her clothes, if Dahyun will even remember her. Momo wonders if Mina will remind her, if Sana will recount their old stories. If Jeongyeon would be so kind to tell her about the woman threatening to ruin the very happiness she had in her hands. Momo only holds Dahyun closer, pressing a lingering kiss to her head and breathing her in, one more time. One last time.

“I won’t be long,” Momo promises with a smirk, drawing Mina into their embrace, pressing her cheek against the top of her head. Her words taste like ash as they leave her mouth, her stomach feeling heavier from more than just the secrets brewing inside. She wishes it could be easier. Wishes that she didn’t have to hide, didn’t have to lie, didn’t have to fear. She wishes and wishes, aching for impossible things even as she pulls back, swallowing down the lump of tears in her throat. “I have to make sure you’re safe, right?”

“Of course.” Mina coos as a squirming Dahyun reaches for her, Momo drinking in the sight of Mina cradling Dahyun back against her chest, hiding her away from the lingering Summer crowds. Momo feels her heart crumble as Mina leans up to press plant a happy kiss against her cheek. “Don’t get into too much trouble over the next two days, okay?”

“Yes, Mrs. Myoui-Yoo,” Momo drawls out, dropping her hand to grip at the handle of her suitcase and mirroring Mina’s easy smile when Mina smacks a hand against her arm. She catches Mina’s hand, tipping her head to press a kiss to Mina’s forehead, to Dahyun’s. “I love you.”

“And we love you.” Mina’s smile softens, humming at the touch and only drawing back at the sound of the pilot’s voice, announcing that the plane was ready to go. Momo’s hand trembles when Mina’s slips from her own, grasping Dahyun’s to make her wave, the drowsy two-year old giggling at the action. “Say bye-bye to auntie Momo.”

“Bye-bye. Love you.” Dahyun gives a sleepy smile, earning a laugh from a delighted Mina as Dahyun’s hand flaps lazily in a wave goodbye. Momo etches the very moment in her mind, in her heart, Dahyun’s simple words ringing in her ears even when she finally leaves, even when she’s home, even when she’s safe.

“Do you think she’ll forget me?” Momo wonders if Jihyo even hears her, her voice almost lost to the monotone of the reporter’s on the news, the pictures of her destroyed plane plastered across the screen.

“No.” Jihyo presses a lingering kiss to her shaking shoulders, and holds her a little tighter, her breaths strong, steady against the tremble of her chest. “Never.”)

“I wish I didn’t have to leave,” Momo whispers into the heavy darkness of her and Jihyo’s bedroom, surrounded by the memories she couldn’t bear to part with, memories with Mina and Sana and Jeongyeon and Jihyo. The memories she could never bear to forget. Chaeyoung’s first smile, her first steps, her first words, kept safe for her, for Jihyo. For…

(Momo is quiet as she slides another picture into its slot, her breathing matching the slow, steady pace of her daughter‘s as she naps on the couch beside her. Jihyo is silent as she sidles up beside her, as she presses a tender kiss to her tense shoulders, fingers tracing gently over one of the few lines that decorate Momo’s stomach. 

It’s almost as if nothing has changed - as if Momo could simply stroll back into the lives she’s destroyed, the expense paid for her own newfound happiness. 

“You’ll wake her with all of your thinking.” Momo’s lips shift into a soft smile at Jihyo’s teasing words, shaking her head as she shuts the photo album beneath her fingers. Chaeyoung’s third now, one to commemorate every year of her life so far.

“We’ll tell her one day, won’t we?” Her eyes shift to look at Chaeyoung’s sleeping face, though she’s sure Jihyo knows Chaeyoung isn’t the only one she’s talking about. The memories flash within her mind as she watches the stuttering rise and fall of Chaeyoung’s breaths, flooded with the images she’d seen that day, of the days that followed.

“Of course.” Jihyo noses against her jawline, the sound of her voice drawing Momo back, back from the past that haunts her, even then. “I promise.”)

* * *

(Jeongyeon wants.

It’s a seed, one that blooms in the hollow chambers that Mina carves into her heart with every moment that she’s trickling out of her life - physically, at least. Play dates are replaced with visits to the hospital, with plentiful letters and photographs and calls. With texts, and emails, and gifts, always laden with promises to see each other soon. Always soon.

Never soon enough.

Jeongyeon wants, endlessly, irrevocably, left aching for every free moment Mina’s sickness has to spare for her. Left bearing witness over every moment stolen by Mina’s rising stardom. Mina’s face soon pops up in short commercials, countless magazines, soft and beautiful and unbroken - always with a girl that isn’t her. Always with this Park Jihyo, who is a model, an aspiring actress, a singer. ( _A ballerina_ , Mina tells her, whispered over the phone like a secret. _Or, she had been, at least.)_

Jeongyeon wants, and wants. Wants more than the letters Jeongyeon tucks away in books, creases worn and characters faded. Wants, and wants for other things - other people. Wants for glory, for triumph, for stolen kisses from faceless souls trying to fill the void of her yearning teenage heart.

Jeongyeon wants, even when Mina finally falls into her arms, even when Mina's hands find their place on her own. Even when Mina is there, and hers, finally.

The hardest thing that Jeongyeon learns, in years of wanting, is that Mina wants, too.

Mina wants, and wants, but it isn't always her.

Never just her.)

"Please, Jeongyeon."

(The hardest thing that Jeongyeon learns, in years of wanting, is that Momo wants, too.)

"This is what she wants!"

(Momo wants, and wants, more viciously than Jeongyeon ever could.)

"No." The simple word sends ice rippling down her own spine, her fingers curling tighter around the phone pressed against her ear. She nods politely at the staff that greets her as she makes her way down the hallway, her mind racing with the million other things she's worrying about.

A million other things other than _this_ ; the quiver of her hands, the sound of Momo's voice and the desperation sinking into her ribs the way they did all those years ago. Momo might as well have been standing before her, her presence - her _loss_ , clinging to her like a sickness.

"Jeongyeon." Momo's voice trembles, soft and quiet and pleading. Momo wants, and wants, and has wanted so much that she'd thrown everything she knew away for a life, hidden away with the woman she loves and the daughter she would kill to keep. "Even just to see her."

Momo wants, fiercely, bravely.

Momo wants, selfishly. Recklessly.

Jeongyeon supposes she's selfish, too. "Not yet."

Jeongyeon ends the call as she reaches the door to Mina's room, sucking in a breath to still the shakiness of her hand as it curls around the handle. The door is silent as Jeongyeon pushes it open, with the soft, steady beep of Mina's heart monitor greeting her like an old friend. 

It's a small reminder that Mina is here. That Mina is _alive_.

A familiar brush of relief settles over Jeongyeon as she steps into the warmth of the room and Mina's easy smile, happy that the news of her improving condition was more than Sana's cautious optimism. 

Jeongyeon takes in the sight of the open windows and its fluttering curtains as she shuts the door behind her, Mina's head turning to face her. She musters up a smile at the sight of Mina smiling and awake, fingers cradling the delicate petals of the fresh new flowers by her bedside. White gardenias.

Sana's favorite.

"Yoo Jeongyeon." Mina's voice is light, playful, her eyebrows furrowing in faux anger. Jeongyeon squashes the dread settling heavily in her stomach, raising her hands and ambling guiltily to her usual seat. Mina's laughter is bright, her eyes warm as Jeongyeon collapses into the seat, settling a hand into the one Jeongyeon rests upon the bed. "You're terribly late. I was worried you'd forgotten about me."

 _I'm sorry_ , Jeongyeon wants to spit out, her head swimming with how easily Mina's hand fits into hers even after all these years. _For everything._

Instead, Jeongyeon joins her in her laughter, willing herself to forget about the weight of her phone in her pocket. Willing herself to fuss over Mina's wince as she continues laughing, rather than her phone's incessant buzzing. Rather than the ache dripping from Momo's voice. _Please, Jeongyeon._

"I could never forget about you, Mina." Jeongyeon wills herself to sink into the easy quirk of Mina's lips, wishes it was so easy to brush away everything Mina had done, everything _she_ had done. Jeongyeon wishes it was so easy to forgive the wrongs they had done to everyone else. To each other.

"And I, you." Mina's hand squeezes around her own, relenting and forgiving, even now. Jeongyeon wishes, and wishes, and loses herself in Mina's gentle touch, even just for now. "I made a promise, remember?"

(Jeongyeon wants, and wants.)

The haunted look in Momo's eyes flashes in the front of her mind, shattering the next breath she takes. "Of course."

(Maybe they are no different.)

* * *

“I’m home!”

(“I’m home!”

“Welcome home!” A voice rings out from their living room, a smile blossoming onto Jihyo’s face at the mere sound of Momo’s voice. She’s quick to set aside papers to be graded, quick to step out of her shoes, if only to see Momo that much faster. 

Jihyo finds her curled up on their two-person sofa, bundled up in too many blankets for her to count, and Jihyo loves her then, loves her so much more than she could have ever dreamed of. More than she ever thought she was capable of.

“Hi,” She greets warmly, padding along and leaning down to press happy kisses to her smiling face. One of her forehead, on her nose, on her lips, lingering for a moment as Momo reaches up to curl a hand against the nape of her neck.

“Hi,” Momo echoes softly, drawing her closer with a growing grin, another kiss. Jihyo is happy to get lost in her, in the way Momo’s other hand curls around her hip, shrugging away her mountain of blankets to settle Jihyo onto her lap. Jihyo is happy to comply, to drink in the sweet noises tumbling from Momo’s lips, her fingers creeping past the hem of Momo’s thin t-shirt.

Of course, they never get too far, not when a familiar cry pierces through their next shared breath. Jihyo finds herself smiling against Momo’s own before Momo’s head falls back, a breathless laugh tumbling past her lips. Jihyo can only join her, if only for a moment, pressing a tender kiss to the mole against Momo’s neck before sliding off her lap. “I’ve got her.”

“Are you sure?” Momo asks her, burning fingers lingering against her skin for just another moment. Jihyo smiles warmly, flinching as another cry echoes through their tiny apartment.

“I’m sure,” Jihyo hums, dropping another quick kiss to Momo’s lips before she starts padding off towards their room. “You’ve been watching her all day. I need some quality time with her too, you know.”

Momo only smiles, the same smile that Jihyo had fallen in love with, over and over again, the corners of her eyes crinkling. Jihyo feels her heart skip, even then. “I love you.”

Jihyo, with a lighter step and an even lighter heart, is happy to mirror it. “I love you too.”)

The phrase is comforting, familiar on her tongue as she steps into their quiet apartment. It’s a welcome habit, especially after everything that has happened that day. Jihyo wonders idly if Jeongyeon had done it on purpose, offering her a job in the very school that mysterious little Tzuyu was attending. She steps out of her shoes and shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Jeongyeon wouldn’t do that. Jihyo listens out for Momo’s voice instead, wondering if she had fallen asleep after getting home from her weekly meet with Jeongyeon.

“Momo?” Jihyo calls out gently, settling her things down on their kitchen counter as she passes, padding down the short hallway in search for her missing girlfriend. She smiles at the sight of their bedroom door, open just a tad, just enough to tell Jihyo that Momo must be inside. She goes to open the door, voice soft as she speaks. “Hello love-.”

“Did you know?” Momo’s voice cuts through her soft greeting, cold, haunting. Only then does Jihyo pause to take her in, take their entire room in - the mess she’s unknowingly stepped into. The photographs, and albums, and memories she’s willed herself to forget.

Momo had told her that they’d been lost in another move.

Jihyo should have known better.

Jihyo swallows thickly, trying to calm the sudden storm in her own head, feeling as if the world might tip over, right at that second. Momo doesn’t even look at her, eyes glued to an old picture of Mina, on their first trip to Switzerland for their first movie. She looks cozy in her simple white sweater, an easy smile on her face, hair pushed back by her sunglasses. “Momo, I…”

“Did you know about Mina?” Momo speaks again. The quiet fills with chaos, now, trembling with the weight of the news she must know, now. Jihyo grows silent at her question, feeling her words jumble in her mouth, feeling her heart twist in her chest. “No lies, Jihyo. We promised.”

A scoff escapes her before she can help herself, eyeing the hurricane of memories that has swept over their room. “That’s _rich._ ”

(“No lies.”

“No lies?” Jihyo echoes in mild amusement and boundless affection, tracing the characters of her own name against the skin of Momo’s chest, smiling at the constellation of marks she’s made. “What do you mean?”

Momo only shifts closer, pressing a light kiss to her bare shoulder. Jihyo melts into her embrace, into her words, the sound of her voice. “We’ve lived lies for as long as I can remember.” Momo’s words wash over her coldly, Jihyo hiding her shiver in the circle of Momo’s arms. “So that’s my one wish. No lies. Not between us. Not ever.”

“Okay,” Jihyo murmurs, content in the warmth of Momo’s embrace, closing her eyes at the touch of her lips against the top of her head. “I promise.”)

“Jihyo, _please_.” Momo’s voice trembles with the weight of their secrets, her fingers digging into the plush of their bedroom carpet. “I don’t want to fight. Please, I just… Did you? Did you know about Mina? About… Chaeyoung?”

“Yes,” Jihyo breathes out after a moment, dropping her gaze to the countless photographs that surrounded them. Jihyo is taunted by their own smiling faces, unburdened by the secrets they carried now, left with no place to set them down. “Momo, I was going to tell you-.”

“But you didn’t,” Momo finishes, finally lifting her head to look at her, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. Jihyo swallows down the lump in her own throat at how Momo’s voice quivers, at how her shoulders sink, at how she looks at Jihyo - eyes swimming in disbelief. She grows pleading then, almost. Jihyo tries not to think about how Momo flinches away as she steps closer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew that this is what would happen.” Jihyo drops to her knees beside Momo, curling a hand around her jaw and keeping her gaze, even for just that moment. “Because we were finally happy, Momo. Because we were finally _free._ ”

“She could have died, Jihyo.” Momo finally breaks under Jihyo’s tender touch, crumbling into the circle of Jihyo’s waiting embrace. Jihyo knows it probably never gets easier, even decades later, suffering through the almost deaths of the girl she’s sworn to protect with her own. The girl they’ve loved so, so deeply. The girl who loved them completely. “She could have died not knowing about this - about Chaeyoung.”

Jihyo doesn’t speak. She can’t find the words to, can’t find any more in her to give, not when they’ve taken so much from her already. _Why?_ She wants to ask, to throw into the face of whatever higher power had handed her this rotten fate. _Why does she deserve to know? After all this time, why is it still_ her _?_

“I want to see her,” Momo whispers, and yet her words are deafening, piercing right through Jihyo’s skin, curling around the unsteady beat of her heart. Jihyo wonders why she’s still so afraid, still so afraid of the woman she had loved then, still so afraid of the woman she’d _left behind,_ all those years ago. _Why did it have to be her? Why now?_ “I want to tell her. About everything. About Chaeyoung.”

Jihyo knows then that there is now escape, not even then, not when they’ve been dead to the world for _fifteen_ years. To think the day had come, to finally face all they’d run away from, one last time.

Even Jihyo should have known that they couldn’t run forever.

* * *

(‘Dear Chaeyoung,

Can you believe that we’ve been talking for five years now? It feels like it was just yesterday when Mrs Kim gave me your letter - 4 year old Chaeyoung, from all the way across the country, with two mommies - just like me. Or, kind of.

It feels like so long ago now.

There are so many things I want to tell you, Chaeyoung, and I don’t even know where to start. I guess this place is as good as any.

Chaeyoung, I’m a big sister now.

I’ve been a big sister for a while now, actually.

Mama finally let me see her, for the first time since she was born. She was so _pretty,_ Chaeyoung. Her name is Tzuyu, she’s two years old and I just met her for the _first time_. Of course, I saw her on my auntie Sana’s Instagram, but this was the first time I saw her in _person._ My own _sister._ But you know what, Chae? She knew who I was. Even though I haven’t met her, even though I’ve barely seen her… She recognized me. Auntie Sana tells me that Mina tells her about me all the time, that Mina makes sure Tzuyu never forgets, that Tzuyu had been so excited to meet me.

It always feels like a dream, Chaeng. Like I’ve stepped into an entirely new world, where everything is the same, but different.

The worst thing is… I don’t know if I’m really even angry at Mina anymore. I know I probably shouldn’t talk to you about this kind of stuff, but I don’t know who else to tell. In a way, you’re like my sister too. I don’t know who else to believe but you.

Only you, Chaengie.

Yours truly,

Big Sister Dahyun.

P.S. Did you like your birthday present? Mina is the one who picked it out for you, after I told her that you liked art. She’s the one who wrapped it too, in the end. I know you’ll put it all to good use. Send me a picture with your next letter, okay? I’ll send you tickets to my new movie in mine.’)

There are still days that Dahyun can hardly believe it - that she’s somebody’s older sister.

It feels surreal, even now that Tzuyu is sleeping right next to her, breathing deep and slow - probably one of the better sleeps she’s had in the past few weeks. Dahyun can’t help but be in awe of her, her beautiful baby sister. _A miracle_ , her aunt Sana had told her one night, as Dahyun carried Tzuyu to bed, legs trembling as Tzuyu’s pups ran around her. _A miracle that she’s even alive._

Dahyun supposes that it’s true. Her fingers comb through her sister’s dark hair, lulling her further into the heavy sleep she’s managed to slip into as they drove. A miracle, too, that she could sleep in the car after what happened. She soothes her thumb over the furrow of Tzuyu’s brow, sucking in a soft breath.

“You were all she could talk about that day,” Her aunt tells her from the passenger seat, sending her a small smile through the rearview mirror. “When you first met.”

(“Hyun!”

Dahyun can’t help the smile that crosses her face at the sound of Tzuyu’s tiny voice, nodding along earnestly to Tzuyu’s eager attempts. Dahyun can’t help but wonder then, how much she’s already missed out on with her baby sister. How much more time she could have had if only… Her anger sears against the affection in her fingertips, avoiding Mina’s gentle look. Dahyun ignores her, keeping still and patient, seating a giggly Tzuyu on her lap.

“ _Dahyun,_ ” She enunciates slowly, grinning at the way Tzuyu’s wide eyes followed her mouth, at the way Tzuyu pulled at the strings of the hoody she was wearing. She can barely contain her delight when Tzuyu repeats it correctly, eyes alight as she meets Mina’s across the room. “She said it!”

Her anger melts away, then. The resentment, the distance, the confusion and darkness - gone, at the simple sound of Tzuyu’s voice, if only for that little while.

If only for another little while.)

“Mina told me that that was her first word.” Dahyun runs her thumb over the intricate little braid woven into Tzuyu’s hair. Her aunt Sana must have taken the time to do it, to dress Tzuyu for the day, all before she had to spend the rest of it with Dahyun, following her around on her shoots. Dahyun regards the darkening circles under her aunt’s eyes. “She told me that Tzuyu wouldn't stop saying it, over and over and over again.”

“She wouldn’t.” Her aunt laughs, turning back towards the windows, seemingly lost in her own memories. Dahyun can only watch her, watch her get lost in her own thoughts, in her own versions of the past - wildly different from hers. Dahyun wonders how she can forgive so easily, so readily. The sound of her aunt’s soft, wishful voice cuts through her thoughts. “I wish you could have met sooner.”

“I know.” It’s Dahyun’s turn to look away, directing her gaze back to her back sister. Back to her steady, even breaths. Back to the curl of Tzuyu’s fingers into her hoody, head tucked against her shoulder. To think Tzuyu would be the light in her darkness - the single light she’s had in all of this. She presses a small kiss to the top of her head, holding her sister as close as she can, and wishes, wishes with her whole heart that she wouldn’t grow up so soon. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

“Don’t be.” Dahyun lifts her gaze to meet her aunt’s once more, soothed by the gentle smile on her tired face. “I’m just glad you’re both here. Let’s keep making the most of it.”

* * *

The walk to the ice cream store is quiet, but not uncomfortable, with Chaeyoung nodding along to things she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Chaeyoung always forgets that these other kids, these other students just like her, lived entirely different lives - lives on an entirely different plane than her own. Chaeyoung always forgets that they see differently, think differently - even walk differently, in a world Chaeyoung could barely see into.

“You looked kind of down earlier,” Yeri starts, hands squeezing around the straps of her bag. Her blazer is tied around her waist, now, scuffed leather shoes kicking about the tiny rocks in their path. Chaeyoung ducks her head at her words. “My mom takes me to this ice cream shop whenever I feel sad. I thought maybe we could carry on the tradition, as new friends.” Yeri’s face is earnest as she peers into Chaeyoung’s. “They have really good ice cream cake.”

“Ice cream cake?” Chaeyoung echoes with a wrinkle of her nose, hiding her rosy cheeks as she jolts away from Yeri’s sudden closeness. She hooks her thumbs against the straps of her backpack, her cheeks warming further at Yeri’s bright laughter.

Yeri only flashes a grin, the same one that glints in the light, wagging a finger at her. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”

Chaeyoung’s phone pings then, with a notification from Dahyun, her unnie from all the way across the country. Or, she had been, at least. Chaeyoung knows they must be much closer now, Chaeyoung braving the same streets of Seoul that Dahyun grew up in. She’s greeted with a simple picture, one of heaping cups of chocolate ice cream, and almost laughs, her heart warmed at the idea that they could share this one thing - almost.

“Who’s that?” Yeri asks, startling Chaeyoung out of her thoughts, a cheeky smirk growing on her face as she nudged Chaeyoung with her elbow. “Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”

“Gross.” Chaeyoung sticks her tongue out at the thought, nudging Yeri back with a laugh and tucking her phone back into her uniform pocket. “She’s like an older sister. I guess they’re going out for ice cream, too. It’s her little sister’s first day.”

“Well, we might catch them. It looks like it’s the same ice cream place.” Chaeyoung’s head snaps towards Yeri at that, whose smirk only grows wider, her hand smacking against Chaeyoung’s as she takes it into her own. “Come on. Let’s make a run for it.”

Chaeyoung lets out a startled laugh as Yeri takes off, practically dragging her along with her. She can barely think about it, the warnings that flash in the back of her mind. All she can think about is the flutter of the wind in her hair, the aching burn of her lungs, and the exhilarating pump of her legs. Her Mom’s words ring through her mind then as her heart thuds wildly in her chest, words she’s heard too many times, yet clearly not enough.

“You need to exercise more,” Yeri teases breathlessly as they slow to a stop in front of a quaint ice cream store, almost hidden amongst the towering buildings surrounding it. Chaeyoung only pushes at her shoulder, flashing her a dimpled grin.

“Give a girl a warning next time.” She huffs out a breath, stumbling as Yeri pulls her along the last of the way, heaving the door open with an exaggerated grunt. The bell tinkles as they step inside, Chaeyoung’s joyous laughter fading away at the sight that welcomes her. 

Chaeyoung can hardly believe it as her gaze settles on the same woman she’d seen only a week before, the same woman glaring at her mother through the screen. The same woman who had turned her entire life upside down, laughing with the girl she’d seen in posters, on billboards, in magazines, on the big screen. The same girl she’d received sleepy selcas from, the same girl she’d treated as a sister - as a best friend. She opens her mouth to speak, but Yeri beats her to it, her hand squeezing around Chaeyoung’s.

“Tzuyu!” Yeri calls, another toothy grin spreading across her face. The name sends ice shivering down her spine, but Chaeyoung can’t take her eyes away from this woman, from Dahyun, and the recognition that flickers in Dahyun’s eyes when she finally, finally meets Chaeyoung’s gaze. 

“Chaeyoung?”

* * *

“Do you remember…” Jeongyeon’s voice is quiet as she traces her fingers over the deep lines of Mina’s palm. Her movements are slow, methodical, trailing over the same paths she’d followed for years, knowing them almost as well as her own. Jeongyeon wonders how much different her hands must be now, soaked and stained and weathered by a love that is not her own. “Our first dance? On our wedding day?”

“How could I forget?” Mina’s laughter is an infinitely welcome sound to the rattling of Jeongyeon’s mind, her smile kind as Jeongyeon laces their fingers, trying to keep her own hands from shaking. She’s grateful that Mina is willing to indulge her, even just for these few moments they had together. She knew her ex-wife had plenty of things to despise her for. “We had grand dreams, Yoo Jeongyeon.”

(Everything seems to melt away, then.

Their guests, the handful of people that had been allowed to attend, grow quiet as Mina extends a hand to her. Her smile is soft, bashful, and her touch is even more so, skin cool to the touch. Jeongyeon wonders if she would ever get used to it, the way Mina made her heart tremble, the way Mina drew her breath away with each step they took to the center of the floor, lost wholly in each other. 

It’s just the two of them, then.

There are no yelling cameramen, no prying eyes, no more worrying, nothing but the gentle touch of Mina’s hand against her waist, and the tender way she cradles Jeongyeon’s hand in the other. Jeongyeon can’t help herself, can’t help but be the one to draw herself closer, settling both arms around Mina’s neck instead. She has no worry about what others might think - not today.

Today, Mina is hers.

Hers only.

Hers for the rest of their lives.

“You look beautiful,” Mina tells her for the umpteenth time, and yet Jeongyeon doesn’t grow tired of it, the sound of Mina’s voice, the way her lips curl and the way her eyes look, sparkling even in the lowlights of the venue. To think, Mina had been so close to… Jeongyeon shakes her head, feeling her cheeks warm and laughing at the next words that leave Mina’s mouth. She won’t think about _that_ today. “Have I told you that today?”

“Not in the last 5 seconds,” Jeongyeon teases, voice warm and full of affection. Today, she can pretend, pretend that this is the way it has always been. Today, she wonders when she had begun pretending for things that have always been hers. Always hers. She grows a little quieter, then, willing to lose herself in the steady counts of their feet. One, two. One, two. “Mina…”

“Thank you for having me, still.” Mina’s voice is soft, apologetic, the pink of her lips brushing against the skin of Jeongyeon’s cheek. Jeongyeon can’t help but love her, can’t help but melt into her words and the way her thumbs brush over the small of her back, holding her closer. Her touch burns, burns even through the silky fabric of Jeongyeon’s dress, burns her so strongly Jeongyeon can hardly breathe. “I know I don’t deserve you, Jeongyeon, but I…”

Jeongyeon shushes her with a gentle kiss, a hand curling around the nape of her neck. She knows she has her own secrets to be sorry for, but she refuses to let anything or anyone ruin their day. She tickles the nape of her wife’s neck, relishing in her surprised giggle. Jeongyeon sways them along, moving in tandem to the music, soft and slow - just as they’d practiced. “Where do you see us, Mrs Myoui Yoo, 50 years from now?”

Mina’s smile is bright, her eyes shimmering with hope, and relief, and easy unguarded adoration. Jeongyeon steals another kiss, a dozen more, earning the thunderous laughter and coos of the crowd watching them on their first dance as a married couple. Mina hums, nose brushing against Jeongyeon’s, a pleased smile on her face. “Celebrating our Golden anniversary.”

“I hope so.” Jeongyeon beams and kisses her once more, sinking into the certainty of Mina’s declaration, into the warmth of her embrace and the swing of the beat and the memory of Mina’s smile, burned into her heart for the rest of her life. She laughs, soft and happy and breathless, especially as the beat picks up, their guests and friends coming to join them. “I love you, Mrs Myoui Yoo.”

Mina kisses her sweetly, deeply, holding her close and ever closer. “And I love you, Mrs. Myoui Yoo.”)

“I’m sorry,” Jeongyeon whispers, a small smile on her face as she loses herself in the depths of their memories, in the warmth of Mina’s apologetic gaze, in the gentleness of her touch. It’s so easy to forget, always so easy to forget when it came to Mina. It was always, always Mina. “We didn’t even make it to 10.”

“It was worth it,” Mina tells her, voice firm and sincere, refusing to let go despite the tremble of her hand, despite the shimmer of her gaze. Despite the ache of her heart. “Every single day, every single moment that I spent by your side as your wife, as Dahyun’s mother… they were some of the happiest in my life, Jeongyeon.”

“And mine,” Jeongyeon promises, wills herself to convince the woman sitting before her, even just for this one moment. She wishes she could live in it, in the moments they’ve been granted in the crevices of this chaos. She feels it, then, the weight of her buzzing phone in her pocket, the ache of Momo’s words and the look in her eyes. Jeongyeon knows better. She knows that there is no more time. She knows that she’s running out of time. “Mina, there’s something that I-.”

“Knock knock.” A voice cuts through the room, through the shared beat of their breaths and their joined hands. Jeongyeon can only bear witness now, taking in the way Mina’s shoulders straighten and the way her face brightens, the beginnings of the smile already tugging at the corners of her lips. Jeongyeon can only bear witness, fingers grasping at straws that were no longer hers to hold. Nayeon pops her head into the room with a small, tender smile. “Is this a bad time?”

“I was beginning to think you were never going to pay me a visit, doctor.” Jeongyeon hardly hears the words, a sudden cloud surrounding her head, the steady click of Nayeon’s heels rattling through the ache in her ribs. She sinks into Nayeon’s brief but happy squeeze, but Jeongyeon can hardly bear to stay, excusing herself to the cafeteria. Mina only offers her a gentle smile before her attention is captured by Nayeon once more, the older woman sinking into the seat she’d once occupied, her fingers lacing through the ones hers used to fit neatly into. 

“Please,” She hears over the thud of her heart in her ears, Nayeon’s voice as bright as the way Mina looked right then. “I will always have time for you, Mrs. Im.”


	6. regret like a riot

It’s overwhelming, the moments that follow Yeri’s cheerful greeting.

The hand anchoring Chaeyoung down to reality slips away from her own, and Chaeyoung can only watch as the smile on Yeri’s face brightens, impossibly so, as she wraps her arms around a beaming Tzuyu’s shoulders. Dahyun shifts, too, pulling her mask down to reveal the delighted smile on her face, already pushing out of her seat. Chaeyoung can’t find it in her to return it, not at the astonished, piercing stare of the woman sitting just behind her.

The same woman who turned her entire life upside down, all with a few simple words, just the week before.

“Chaeyoung?” Dahyun calls, the smile slowly fading from her face as Chaeyoung stands still before her. Dahyun hesitates in her steps, and yet Chaeyoung can’t answer, can’t find her tongue, trembling before someone she thought she’d known her whole life.

Dahyun, 7 years old, with two mommies, just like her. Yoo Dahyun, 13 years old and at the top of the world, and yet so angry and confused. Yoo Dahyun, 17 years old and only daughter of renowned chef Yoo Jeongyeon and… Myoui Mina, the very woman this Sana, still gaping, had claimed to be her mother.

Yoo Dahyun, reaching out to her, offering a hand into a world she’s never ever dreamed of joining.

Yoo Dahyun, with her kind eyes and gentle smile and open arms.

Yoo Dahyun, her  _ sister. _

Chaeyoung runs.

Chaeyoung runs, despite the protest in Dahyun’s voice, runs despite the confusion in Yeri’s, runs despite the burn in her lungs and her legs and the thundering of her heart. Chaeyoung runs, and runs, even as darkness teases at the edges of her vision. She runs, and begs for her heart to hang on, just a little longer.

She runs, and runs, and runs, until there is nothing left but the deafening silence and the heave of her own breaths, her heart racing within her chest. She runs, until her world spins and her lungs ache and reality slips from her fingers, drowning her in cold, suffocating dark.

Infinite, infinite dark.

(It’s cold.

That’s the first thought that crosses Chaeyoung’s mind, her head throbbing in time with the slow, soft beeping that fills the room. All she can feel is the soreness of her head, along with the dryness of her mouth, the tightness of her throat, the ache of her limbs. Everything feels foreign, then. From the touch of clothes against her skin, to the smell of the very room she was lying in.

Foreign, except for the warmth of her Mom’s hand in hers, strong and warm and gentle, always there to guide her back to the surface.

“Mom?” She calls out, the words scraping against her throat, opening her heavy eyelids to the sight of her Mom’s relieved face, her bright eyes shimmering with tears. Chaeyoung doesn’t really understand, then, why her Mom sweeps her up into her arms, why she cradles her to her chest, pressing kisses to the crown of her head. Chaeyoung doesn’t really understand, the way her Mom’s voice trembles, the way her shoulders shake, the way her entire body seems to melt, now that Chaeyoung is awake.

“I’m here, sweetheart,” She hears as she clings to the fabric of her Mom’s shirt, soft and safe and warm in her embrace. “I’m right here.”)

* * *

(“Dahyun, slow down!”

Dahyun doesn’t listen. She hardly ever does, not when it comes to her Mom, a cheeky grin on her face as she speeds away. The gardens are vast but familiar, and Dahyun knows every tree and flower in her path like the back of her hand, waving easily away, away, away. Her Mom’s voice follows, growing only fainter and fainter, and it’s only when she can no longer hear it does Dahyun slow to a stop, turning back to where she last heard her.

“Mommy?” Dahyun calls out, a smile present on her face as she wanders through the towering trees, following the worn path her Mom and her aunties must have worn into the earth years before her. She muffles her giggles with her hands, wondering if her Mom was simply hiding, waiting to pounce out at her, like she did a million times before.

“Mommy?” Dahyun calls again when her Mom doesn’t answer, when she doesn’t even hear her Mom’s muffled laughter, or the sound of her shuffling about in one of her dozens of hiding places. Her hands fall away from her mouth when she finally finds her, lying against the grass, her dark hair hiding her face away. She beams, running over and pouncing on her back, hands grasping at her shoulders. “Found you!”

Only, her Mom doesn’t answer.

She doesn’t even flinch, even when Dahyun pushes against her shoulders. She doesn’t turn her head and smile like she always does, bright and sunny, doesn’t even try to tickle her, now that Dahyun is so close. Only then does fear start to settle into her heart, her Mama’s words ringing in her ears.

“Mommy, this isn’t funny.” Dahyun shakes her again before she starts to call out for her Mama, for her aunt Sana, voice growing thick with tears. She stays with her Mom until her Mama finds them, until her Mom is torn from her own grip, until she sits, sniffling through her tears in the hospital on aunt Sana's lap.

"It wasn't your fault," Dahyun hears, her aunt's lips pressed against the crown of her head. She can hardly hear her over the sound of her Mama's pacing, her worried footsteps clicking up and down the hallway. "Your Mom will wake up soon, okay? I promise.")

It's Dahyun that finds her, her chest heaving and her hands shaking, her cap lost in the wind.

She finds Chaeyoung in the middle of a small crowd already calling for ambulances, for help. She shoulders past the bystanders without a second thought, dropping to her knees beside her, brushing Chaeyoung's hair away from her face. Away from the blood from her split eyebrow.

Dahyun feels the same pang in her chest, then, the same pang she felt at the sight of Tzuyu through the glass, so impossibly small and broken in the wake of her accident.

It's Dahyun who sits with her in the ambulance, pressing lies through her teeth, claiming to be Chaeyoung's older sister. She sprouts out the things Chaeyoung has told her in her letters, in countless emails and texts, Chaeyoung's hand cold between her own. She had only seen it once before, Chaeyoung's scar, almost matching the one she knew her own mother had on her own chest.

"She's fine," The paramedics tell her. Their words feel hollow, ringing in her head, her hand only tightening around Chaeyoung's, feeling as if she might disappear if she lets go of her for even one second. All Dahyun can do is gaze upon her, upon Chaeyoung's flushed cheeks and shallow breathing, breath clouding against the oxygen mask. 

Why had she run away? Chaeyoung had even texted her that morning…

Dahyun is jolted out of her thoughts when they finally arrive at the hospital, the same one that housed her own mother. Her body moves mechanically as she follows them down the long hallways, ignoring her buzz of her phone for the mean time. Dahyun would bear the repercussions later, too busy to think, too busy to do anything but pace outside of the emergency room they had stolen Chaeyoung into.

Her phone rings again, now buzzing with Tzuyu's special tone, stilling her for a moment. It's only then that she answers, her breath trembling as deeply as her hands were at that very moment. "Tzuyu…"

"What were you  _ thinking? _ You can't just run off like that." Her aunt's voice is the one that snaps through the line, as furious as it was filled with concern, Tzuyu piping up in the background. Sana is gentle as she hushes Tzuyu, but her anger spikes when she turns back to Dahyun, Dahyun almost flinching at her tone. She has half a mind to hang up, but knows her aunt won't let her hear the end of it if she does. "Dahyun, something could have happened to you."

"I had to go after her," Dahyun defends, her exhaustion only catching up to her then, avoiding the curious looks of recognition that the people in the waiting room were giving to her. She pulls her mask back up, running a hand through her wind-ruffled hair. "We're at the hospital."

"What?" Dahyun hears a clatter on the other side, Yerim's voice, soft and confused and apologetic. Dahyun curls a nervous hand into the fabric of her hoody, eyeing the dried blood on her fingertips. Maybe she had been a little rash, but who knows what would have happened if she hadn't chased after her. Who knows what might have happened if anyone else had found Chaeyoung, lying on the sidewalk like that? "Which hospital?"

"Mina's," Dahyun replies eventually, lifting her gaze and wondering if her Mama was up there, just like she had been for the past few weeks. She wonders if her Mom is awake, if her Mom would even want to see her. It had been her fault, after all. All her fault. Her fault, again. "Aunt Sana…"

"Stay there." Sana's voice grows quiet, softer. Dahyun's shoulders sink at the sound of the car door, the rumble of their driver's voice, the ever curious tone of Tzuyu's. Her aunt lets out a soft breath on the other line. "I'm glad you're safe, Dahyun."

"Me too," Dahyun murmurs, sinking down into an empty waiting chair, wishing to be as faceless as the other that surrounded her, waiting for their own news. "See you soon."

* * *

"How are you feeling?"

("Earth to Myoui."

Mina doesn't lift her head at the sound of Nayeon's voice, keeping her eyes trained on the moving hands of the watch wrapped around her wrist.  _ Tick, tock. Tick, tock. _ Nayeon calls her name again, voice soft, low. "Mina?"

"You're not this kind of doctor, Nayeon," Mina finally responds, running her finger over the delicate designs etched into her wedding ring, still ever present on her finger. As a sigh tumbles from Nayeon's lips, Mina wonders if Jeongyeon still wears hers. She didn't seem to be when she was out with… "I really wish you would stop acting like one."

"Mina," Nayeon tries again, scooting her seat closer to her, a hand reaching out to still her own. Mina flinches at the touch, drawing her hands back to herself, eyes snapping up to meet Nayeon's.

"Why are you still here, Nayeon?" Mina can't help but ask, her voice sharp, biting. Mina feels her exhaustion catching up to her once more, aching for a moment of peace in the whirlwind of activity that Jeongyeon's been swept up to, barely a week after she's left. "If this is about Jeongyeon…"

Her name still feels like acid in her mouth, burning down her throat and through her soul, leaving her with endless questions. Despite Jeongyeon's denials, she couldn't deny the doubt that crept through Mina's mind. Is that why she had been so unhappy? Is that why she had asked for this?

"I'm not here because of anyone, or anything else, Mina." Nayeon's voice is firm, drawing Mina back into her dim reality, sitting in the corner of a cold coffee shop, held together by the fraying strings of her entire being. Nayeon holds her gaze, calm and unwavering. "We're friends too, Mina. Let me be here for you.")

Nayeon's voice is soft and low, still, Nayeon's hands cradling her own, just like Jeongyeon had been only moments ago. Mina can't help but sink into the touch, into the differences between their touch, with Nayeon's hands worn with different weather. Her ring - one they'd chosen together - is cool against Mina's skin, and Mina is happy to lose herself in her touch, happy to lose herself in her wife's mere presence. 

All Mina knows then is Nayeon, who's checking the cast wrapped around her other arm, her eyebrows pinched together in concern. She can't help but smile, but laugh, even as her ribs ache and her lungs burn, lifting her hand away from Nayeon's to soothe her wrinkled brow with her thumb. "I'm fine, Nayeon. You're worrying again."

("You'll melt her, Nayeon."

It isn't the first time, really, that Mina can hardly believe this quiet, new future with Nayeon and Sana.

It's a wondrous, incredible thing - a wondrous, incredible future that feels more and more concrete with every second, every minute and every day that this life has granted to her.

Nayeon's laughter shakes, but she smiles so brightly that the corners of her eyes wrinkle, looking so young and lovely and vibrant that Miina can hardly bear to bask in her light. The baby in her arms seems to agree, joining Nayeon in her delighted laughter with her own gurgles, tugging at the stray strands of Nayeon's hair. It is nearly golden, now, falling out of the messy bun Sana had tied earlier that morning.

"I'm sorry, I've held so many kids before but..." Nayeon offers, awed and breathless, fingers brushing softly over the fine hairs on their daughter's head. She lifts her head, Mina's cheeks warming in the light of Nayeon's tender gaze. "Tzuyu is just… so small. I don't know how you and Sana do it. I'm afraid I might break her."

Mina grins, feeling her heart swell with unadulterated bliss, tipping forward to press a reassuring kiss to Nayeon's shoulder. "Trust that your daughter is made of stronger stuff, Im Nayeon."

Nayeon's smile only brightens, eyes still swimming with affection as she turns her head, catching Mina's lips in a slow, tender kiss. "I love you, Im Mina. You've given me the greatest gift in the world."

"I love you, too." Mina's forehead settles lightly against Nayeon's, her crumbling world finally beginning to feel complete once more. "So, so much.")

"It's impossible not to." It's Nayeon's trembling breath that draws her back into the present, her eyes closing as she settles under Mina's gentle touch. She lifts her own to curl around Mina's once more, turning her head to press a kiss to her palm. "Sana and I… We were worried sick at the thought that we could have lost you and Tzuyu like that."

Nayeon only scoots closer, thumb running over the healing cuts and bruises left behind by the accident. Mina can only watch the storm brewing in Nayeon's eyes, drawing dark thoughts from the deepest corners of her mind. Mina gives her hand a squeeze, drawing her back to reality - back to her. "Nayeon."

"I read the reports… I  _ saw _ our car," Nayeon whispers, a haunted look washing over her features. Her shoulders shudder with her next breath, rattling inside her chest. "If you hadn't done what you did with Tzuyu, she might not have-."

"But she did," Mina cuts her off, bumping her forehead against Nayeon's, thumb brushing away the beginnings of her tears. Nayeon's lips part with another trembling breath, shoulders sinking. "We both did, Nayeon. We're both here, and alive. With Sana. With  _ you _ ."

"Mina." Nayeon looks at her then, eyes wide and searching, shimmering with the fear and exhaustion she must have been grappling with for the past few weeks. Mina aches to take it all away, mustering up her strength to prove that she was here, that she would stay. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you. Either of you."

"You won't," Mina promises, drawing Nayeon in for a lingering kiss, feeling her breath quiver against her lips. "We won't be going anywhere. I promise."

* * *

('Dear Dahyun,

Do you think we'll ever get the chance to meet? I like to think about it sometimes, when Mum is busy working out her study plans for her students, when Mom is busy planning her next dance routine for hers. I know they both love me alot, but they're so busy sometimes, and with all the moving we do… Talking to you makes me feel like I have an older sister that I can just hang out with, you know?

Is that silly of me?

I'm going to be old enough to go to high school soon. I know it might just be wishful thinking, but I hope the next place we move to is a little closer to you. Maybe then, we can really meet. I hope you won't be too busy, Miss Superstar. I'm looking forward to your new movie! Save a seat for me, okay?

Yours truly,

Chaeng.

P.S. Thanks again for the art supplies. I included my own version of your movie poster with my letter. What do you think? You better keep it with the rest of the things I've sent you! I'll check!)

* * *

("I wish every night could be like this."

Mina's words are soft, brimming with affection, her lips a breath away from Jeongyeon's skin. Jeongyeon's fingers tighten around Mina's as her lips finally press against her shoulder, startled out of her own thoughts, out of the secrets clinging to her ribs. Her mind flashes to the papers she had lying in the drawer, the decision settling like a stone in her stomach.

"I know." Jeongyeon feels another sleepy kiss press against her shoulder, and she feels her heart skip, just like it did 5, 10 years ago. She feels Mina wriggle ever closer, chest moulding against Jeongyeon's back, and Jeongyeon is happy to be held, sinking into Mina's familiar touch. She runs her hand over the length of her arm - a wordless apology, one Mina has known for years, between harried phone calls and escaping from one place to the next. "I wish it could be like this all the time, too."

They settle in the quiet of their bedroom for the moment, settle into the sheets of a bed they'd chosen together, settle into the illusion Jeongyeon has built for so long that not even Jeongyeon knows what is true and what isn't, anymore. She curls tighter against Mina, wanting to be selfish for one more night, wanting nothing more than to quiet the whispers in her chest, in her mind. To silence the cruel, foul things they say.

They've grown louder recently, emboldened by the time she spends with Momo, Jihyo and Chaeyoung. 

"Mina," Jeongyeon finds herself saying into the darkness of their bedroom, in between Mina's slowing breaths and the warmth of her arms around her waist. "Did you ever love me?"

"What?" Mina startles from the beginnings of her sleep, the incredulity plain in her voice. The hurt. She feels Mina start to pull away, and suddenly Jeongyeon wishes she'd never spoken, turning to catch Mina's arm and keep her close, even for just another moment. Jeongyeon turns and sees her wife, sees her wide eyes and the way they shimmer, the way they always have, speaking volumes louder than anything she could actually say. "Why would you ask me that, Jeongyeon?"

"It was a stupid question." Jeongyeon shakes her head, because of course Mina loves her, because of course she means more to Mina than just her name, her reputation. Their legacy… right? "Let's just go to bed. We have to be up early for a shoot tomorrow."

"Is that what you think of me?" Mina's voice is quiet, almost lost in the rustle of the sheets, lost in the way Jeongyeon tries to draw her hands back into her own. "All these years, you don't think I  _ loved  _ you?"

_ Of course not,  _ Jeongyeon wants to say. But she hears the whispers. She hears the rumors. She knows of the way people speak, of how it was never real. That what they had had, had never been real.

"Would it really be so far from the truth?" Jeongyeon stills, her fingers curled loosely around Mina's wrist as she speaks, voice thick with tears she hasn't dared to shed. "We met out of necessity and married out of responsibility. For God's sake, Mina, you almost left me at the altar! How would I know-?"

"If I really loved you?" Mina finishes for her, because Mina knows her, knows her better than anyone else on the entire planet. Has known her for years, and years, before all of this. Before any of this. Jeongyeon feels her slipping from her own grasp again. Only now, Jeongyeon has no one to blame but herself. "Do you really feel that after all this time, I don't love you? That I've never loved you?"

Mina sounds defeated, then. She draws herself up from their bed, and Jeongyeon can't bear to stop her. Jeongyeon can only watch as her hair spills over her shoulders, watch as her shoulders tremble, her weak laughter ringing through the hollow of Jeongyeon's chest.

"I guess she was right in the end," Mina whispers, lifting her head to meet Jeongyeon's gaze, cheeks stained with tears, smile painted with hurt. "I guess you're finally tired of me, too."

Jeongyeon rises in their bed, feeling the lump that rises in her throat, the tightness in her chest, her tongue heavy with words that threatened to spill. Mina stops her with a shaking hand. "Mina, that's not-."

"I think I'll sleep in Dahyun's room tonight," Mina whispers, brushing at her cheeks and slipping completely off the bed, standing on shaking legs. Jeongyeon watches her shrink into herself, stiffening when her wife reaches into the drawer beside their bed, retrieving a small, simple box. 

Of course. How could she have forgotten? 

Jeongyeon swallows thickly at the soft smile Mina musters despite her tears, a shallow numbness ringing through her as Mina places the box on their bed, voice almost too weak to hear. "Happy anniversary, Jeongyeon. I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you."

Jeongyeon watches her go then, like she has a million times before. She watches her go, like she has for countless mornings, for countless nights. Only then does Jeongyeon feel like she's lost her - forever.) 

The bracelet twinkles on her wrist as she shuts the door behind her, its charms chiming gently as she rests against it. She tries not to think about it, everything she has lost, everything she's chosen to give up. Jeongyeon regards the charms that line the bracelet, feeling that old, familiar pang in her chest.

Even during their times of turmoil, even as Jeongyeon burnt the bridges between Mina and their daughter, Mina never failed to add to them - one for every year.

Jeongyeon feels a watery smile cross across her face as she knocks her fist lightly against her forehead. "Stupid."

("Stupid piece of-."

"Language." Seungyeon's voice is low, sleepy from her position on the couch, earning a glare from Jeongyeon. Her sister only gives her a lazy smirk, taunting her with a tip of her head. Jeongyeon would have kicked her out already, if not for the fact that Dahyun refused to let go of her, even after she'd fallen asleep.

"I wish you would stop showing her these." Her voice is quiet, but even. She goes about the living room, cleaning up the mess her sister and her daughter had left behind for the day. She shuts another worn photo album that's split open on the coffee table, tucking it under her arm as Seungyeon watches from the couch. Her arms shift around a sleeping Dahyun, looking sorry. For once.

"I've tried hiding them from her." Seungyeon has the mind to keep her voice low, soothing a stirring Dahyun back to sleep with the simple motion of running her hand up and down her back. Jeongyeon shuts another photo album. "But she isn't a kid anymore, Jeongyeon. They're all she wants to look at whenever you're not home."

"Why?" Jeongyeon lets out a small breath, thumb brushing over the glossy plastic of one of the open pages before she shuts the last album, shaking her head. An empty slot. Dahyun must have taken one. "Mina gets to see her every other week. She hasn't made a big deal out of them before."

"She's just met her younger sister, Jeongyeon," Seungyeon states, as if it's supposed to quell the storm brewing in Jeongyeon's mind. As if Tzuyu is supposed to flash within her mind before Chaeyoung does. "A sister that you've kept her from for  _ two years _ . A mother you've kept her from for even longer. What's the harm in-?"

"Her parents are divorced, Seungyeon. Her mother remarried, Seungyeon, starting another family  _ without _ her." Jeongyeon slams the albums in her arms down harder than she intends to, startling Dahyun awake - though Jeongyeon suspects she's already been awake for much longer. She closes her eyes as Dahyun excuses herself, the memory of Nayeon's face flashing in her mind. The sound of her voice, pleading for a chance. She lets out a shuddering breath, shoulders sinking at the weight of her sister's stare. "That's the harm in it.")

Jeongyeon pushes herself away from the door, brushing away the tears that have fallen despite herself.

This was not her place.

This was no longer her place.

* * *

"What a mess."

("I can't believe you've dragged me into this mess."

Jihyo's head lolls to the side at the sound of Jeongyeon's voice, soft, dripping with exhaustion. Jihyo takes the chance to really drink her in, then, Momo having left them by their lonesome to tend to a hungry Chaeyoung, barely a handful of weeks old. 

Jeongyeon fiddles with a near empty beer bottle in one hand, with her wedding band in the other, her eyes shimmering in the low light of Jihyo and Momo's quaint apartment. Jihyo thinks of the nights before this, the nights spent with Sana and Momo and Mina, the nights that stretched into the day, always fighting like little kids. 

If only it were that simple, now.

Jihyo feels her stomach turn at Jeongyeon's words, mulling over the sacrifices Jeongyeon has made - heavy, and thankless. She wishes she could have more to say, wishes she could muster up the courage to even apologize. "Jeongyeon…"

Jeongyeon only shakes her head and finishes her drink, slipping her ring back onto her finger and into the life she was risking just to save Chaeyoung's. "You've never apologised to me, Park Jihyo. I don't think you'll be starting now."

Jihyo finishes her drink, eyes locked onto Jeongyeon's back and the phone she holds tightly, flashing with a picture of a smiling Mina and Dahyun. "How about a thank you?"

Jeongyeon only laughs, lingering in the doorway for only a moment longer, already gone. "I guess I'll take it.")

Jihyo regards the scattered photographs, their scattered memories, spilling out on the bedroom floor. Her chest aches with the breath she heaves out, her shoulders aching with the weight of the secrets she carried for so long. They only serve as a cruel reminder, now, of all they had. Of all they lost.

Jihyo wonders just how much more there was left for them to lose.

Momo had fallen asleep only moments ago, after what felt like an eternity cradling her to her chest. Jihyo felt helpless against Momo's incoherent sobs, her strained pleas. Turning her head back towards Momo, the woman she has loved for almost half of her life, Jihyo wonders if she's been a fool for not seeing how terribly Momo had suffered in carrying this weight for so long. To have lost the people she had grown up with, to lose her family, her friends, her entire life - all in one fell swoop.

Jihyo can't help but wonder over how much Momo has sacrificed for her and Chaeyoung, for the chance at this quiet life they were leading, away from everyone and everything they had been.

She presses a trembling kiss to her head, brushing her bangs away from her eyes and lingering for just another minute, lingering on what might be the last moment of quiet they'll have in days, in weeks, in months. The peace they had sacrificed everything for seems so far away now, with the murky waters of their past seeping through the cracks of the walls they had built around their tiny kingdom.

They had taken for long enough.

Jihyo sinks, away from Momo and down to the floor, kneeling amongst the memories she'd tried to bury, that she's tried to replace with the warmth of her daughter's smiles, the light of Momo's love. It has worked for so long that Jihyo thought they might have gotten away with it. How silly of her.

"In the end," Jihyo murmurs to herself, fingers tracing over a photograph of the one person she's failed to forget, even after years and years. "It all comes back to you, doesn't it?"

("What are you doing?"

Jihyo startles at the sound of a young girl's voice behind her, turning as best she could without tangling her crutches. They clatter against the tiles as she falls to the ground, a gasp sounding in her ears, hands soon grasping around her own. A familiar face stands before her, a stuffed penguin abandoned on the floor as this girl helps her back up and onto her crutches.

"I'm sorry for scaring you." Jihyo draws herself up with a soft grunt, watching how delicately the girl brushes off her toy, how tightly she clutches it to her chest. She's only seen her a handful of times before, always surrounded by two older girls, or men as large as skyscrapers. It's the first time Jigyo has seen this mysterious Myoui Mina, truly alone. "You looked like you needed some help."

"I don't need anyone's help," Jihyo huffs out, face flushing with crimson. She ignores the pain gripping her knee as she tries to turn back around, ignores Mina's worried stare. "What are you even doing here?"

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" Mina counters, hands soothing over the soft surface of the penguin in her arms. "We aren't allowed in the kitchen without adults."

"Cookies," Jihyo relents, stilling a curious Mina in her tracks, gesturing vaguely to the counter behind her with one crutch, leaning heavily on the other. She feels her arms screaming at the strain. "They had left over cookies."

Mina tilts her head, looking very much like a puppy as she comes closer, reaching over Jihyo's shoulder to grab the plate she'd been trying to juggle for the past ten minutes. Jihyo purses her lips as Mina cradles her penguin with one arm, the saran-wrapped plate in the other.

"I'm Myoui Mina," This strange, new intruder of hers says with a bashful smile, shifting the plate and the penguin in her arms. "Can we be friends?"

Jihyo regards her, this Mina who is so different to the rest of them. This Mina who never leaves her room without a half dozen people wandering after her. This Mina, whose heart is as broken as her legs are - for now. This Mina, who looks at her with earnest eyes and an even more earnest smile, looking as if she was giving her the world instead of a plate full of cookies. Jihyo looks at her and offers her own smile, giving a firm nod.

"Park Jihyo," She answers, wishing she'd known that this would be the moment that would turn her life upside down, forever. "Let's be friends.")

The memory draws a smile onto Jihyo’s face, soft and sad and wishful. They must have been around Tzuyu's age, then, and Jihyo wonders how they had gotten so far from a shared plate of cookies and holding hands under the starlight. She wonders how much of herself she's sacrificed, trying to forget these memories as much as she tried to forget the ones made of hurt.

She finds a dozen more photographs, drinking in the sight of their bright, smiling faces. Of her, and Mina and Momo, Sana and Jeongyeon. They had been so young, once. They had been so happy, once.

("Truce."

Jihyo regards the hand extended towards her suspiciously, knowing better than to keep Yoo Jeongyeon for her word - especially when it came to one Myoui Mina. Jeongyeon only rolls her eyes, grabbing her hand and shaking it forcefully, enough to rattle Jihyo's thoughts.

"Just for tonight," Jeongyeon says breezily, but her voice is the softest that Jihyo's ever heard, her grip loosening around hers. Her eyes are warm, gentle, and looking at someone else entirely. 

Jihyo knows that Momo is carrying Mina on her back just behind them, a squealing Sana trying to hunt them down for stealing her phone away - again. Jihyo watches her for that moment, hand still held loosely in Jeongyeon's, and Jihyo wonders what makes them so different.

Jihyo watches her, and wonders what chance she stands against someone who looks at Mina like that.

"Just for tonight," Jihyo agrees flippantly, giving Jeongyeon's hand a squeeze that leaves her yelping in pain, painting a smirk on Jihyo's face. They turn back to their friends together, leaving their petty feud behind for now. Tonight, there is no fighting, no bickering. No more than laughter that makes their bellies hurt, and warmth that Jihyo will carry for every moment left in her life.

Later that night, she meets Jeongyeon's gaze as Mina stumbles back into Jeongyeon's arms, dizzy with laughter. Jihyo supposes that even in times of peace, there are little victories, too.)

"God, Yoo Jeongyeon," Jihyo breathes out, resting her back against the edge of the bed and taking in Jeongyeon's easy smile, hair tousled, arms locked tightly around an equally beaming Mina. "We were so in over our heads, weren't we?"

She wonders, too, how much Jeongyeon has sacrificed. For a family that wasn't even her own. For a woman her own wife had loved, the very woman who had been so close to stealing her away. For a family she had resented for so, so long.

_ I can't let a child die _ , Jeongyeon had told her all those years ago, mind and grave made, standing beside her in front of the glass keeping them from Chaeyoung, ever fiddling with the ring around her finger.  _ Not even yours _ .

Jihyo is drawn away from her thoughts by the sound of her phone ringing, her obnoxious ringtone piercing through the tense quiet of their room and the deafening noise of her mind. She checks the time, knowing Chaeyoung must be on her way home from her little ice cream trip with her new friend.

She makes a blind grab for her phone, grateful for the break from her thoughts,her voice filling with warmth as she catches the last ring of the call. Only, it isn't Chaeyoung that answers, her brow furrowing at the unfamiliar voice on the other end, at the words being spoken, a panic settling deeply in her heart. "No…"

* * *

("We can't stay much longer."

Momo doesn't turn at the sound of Jeongyeon's voice, her fingers tracing over the deep grooves of the characters etched into the stone before her, her eyes drinking in the sight of her own smiling face, framed by dark wood.  _ Hirai Momo _ , it reads.  _ Beloved daughter and friend.  _ "I'm sorry."

"Are you?" Jeongyeon's question drives deeply into the gaping wound in her chest, Momo once again confronted with the memory of how violently Mina had cried over her empty grave, left without a body to bury. The thought of Sana, and her unwavering strength - the tears and prayers she'd offered, for a liar, a coward. "Is this all worth it, Momo?"

Momo thinks of Jihyo, of Chaeyoung, of the home they've started to build - the life and the future that was waiting for her, for them. A single chance, away from all of this. Away from everything they've known. 

"Yes," She whispers, limbs heavy and heart heavier, rising to her feet. "It's all worth it.")

“Momo!”

Momo jolts awake at the sound of Jihyo’s voice, springing up with a gasp, ripped abruptly from a moment she hadn’t thought about in so, so long. Jeongyeon’s question rings in her head, even now, Jihyo cupping her cheeks, trying to steady her gaze. She feels her chest heave as she sinks into Jihyo’s trembling touch, lifting a hand to cover Jihyo’s own, searching for some sort of tether to reality - to the sound of Jihyo’s voice.

“Momo,” Jihyo breathes out, her ever steady hands shaking, her eyes wide, fearful. Momo has only seen the same look a handful of times before, only ever with Chaeyoung. The world seems to collapse, then, with Jihyo’s voice the only thing to pierce through the sudden chaos of her mind.  _ Please _ , she begs.  _ Anyone but-  _ “...Chaeyoung. It’s Chaeyoung. We have to go.”

Momo wonders, then, if any of it was truly worth it at all.

* * *

Sana wonders if the universe enjoys it, toying with her fate.

Sana wonders if the universe enjoys it, toying with all of their fates, with the quiet of their lives, especially now. The drive to the hospital is silent, a quiet Tzuyu tucked into her side. Her hands say a different story, one hand curled into Sana’s shirt, refusing to let go.

“Is Dahyun unnie okay?” Tzuyu asks her, the first words she’s spoken since they’ve gotten into the car. Sana can only attempt to soothe her, a hand running gently over her hair, a kiss pressed to the crown of her head. “Ahma, who was that strange girl?”

“I don’t know,” Sana breathes out her lies easily, as if she hadn’t been staring at Jihyo’s files even the night before - at Chaeyoung’s. She can hardly believe how closely their lines had been tangled before, how  _ close _ they’d been for so long. Too long. This has all been going on for much too long. “I’ll be sure to find out, okay? You don’t have to worry. Ahma will take care of this.”

Tzuyu only hums, burying in further against her. Sana only holds her closer, letting Tzuyu’s head rest against her chest. She can only hope that Tzuyu doesn’t feel it, the violent storm brewing in the hollow of her chest, the secrets threatening to spill out at any moment. Tzuyu fiddles with one of the buttons on her shirt, peering up at her. “Can we visit Mommy too?”

Mina. Of course.

“Of course we can, baby.” Sana combs her fingers through Tzuyu’s hair, like she’s done for years, trying to soothe her worries and her fears. “I’m sure she’ll be very happy to see you.”

“I miss her a lot, Ahma,” Tzuyu whispers, settling into her simple touch. She can’t imagine just how much Tzuyu must miss her, if her own longing feels like a gaping hole in her chest. Sana aches for the simple life they had wished for Tzuyu, for the quiet that her and Mina’s life with Nayeon had finally given them. “Do you miss her too?”

“I do.” Sana closes her eyes, holding Tzuyu ever closer, aching for another moment of peace, of silence. “She’ll be home with us soon. I promise.”


End file.
